Posts tagged The Roost
Outdoor Wedding Venues near Central PA

The Roost in Mahaffey is a newer outdoor wedding venue just a short 1.5 hour drive from State College and 2 hours from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. The Roost is an excellent venue choice for your wedding if you’re looking for a location that’s easy for family from either side of Pennsylvania to travel to, not to mention that it’s absolutely gorgeous and very thoughtfully designed.

Each year the owners of the Roost seem to make improvements to the venue, the most recent being a major upgrade to the ceremony location! Guests can now enjoy easier access to and from the ceremony spot with the addition of new cement work in the seating area. Also new this year are the addition of white benches for guests to sit - both a functional and aesthetic upgrade for your ceremony!

Justine and Tyler said “I do” here at the Roost in May of 2024, enjoying these new upgrades to the ceremony spot as seen in the photos below. As always, the Roost offers two beautiful rooms for your bridal party to get ready in, a covered patio for cocktail hour or a rain plan for your ceremony, and the show-stopping reception area that can accommodate huge weddings or small weddings without looking like an empty warehouse.

Some of the greatest wedding venues are the ones that can accommodate bad weather and pivot while still looking beautiful in every corner of the property. For Justine and Tyler’s wedding, the thunder was rolling during the vows and we raced against the clock to finish the family photos - happily there is a roof over a very large pavilion for the ceremony so we were covered both literally and figuratively. Even doing photos under the covered patio off of the main building turned out beautifully as the rain started to drizzle down.

While the remoteness of the venue can make lodging for your guests a little tricky (the closest major hotel is a 45 minute drive in Indiana, PA), the stunning views more than make up for the travel.

The Roost Event Center Mahaffey Wedding | Mike and Alicia

The Roost Event Center in Mahaffey is a beautiful new timber frame wedding venue with plenty of space for hosting your ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception for your wedding. The owners really thought of everything when building this amazing venue, and after seeing a LOT of wedding venues over the past 12 years, this one immediately became a favorite.

The grounds are very crowd-friendly, with paved parking areas, multiple bathrooms, paved walkways and ramps, and lots of space inside their multi-level reception area to seat everyone comfortably and still have a large dance floor. There is even an option to host your ceremony indoors in their adjoining room in case of inclement weather without having to move any tables or chairs, and this room easily holds even the largest buffet set-up and expansive cookie table without having to sacrifice dance floor space or dance time with tearing buffet tables down after dinner. Simply put, there is ROOM for EVERYTHING and that means less stress for EVERYONE involved!

We started Mike and Alicia’s gorgeous wedding day in the beautifully decorated bridal party suites, one for the women and one for the men, situated right next to each other with locked keypad entry so no accidental “peeks!” The suites each had plenty of bathrooms and mirrors in addition to lounging spaces to accommodate all the demands of getting ready for wedding day.

The ceremony was held under the beautiful and expansive pavilion, featuring more of the same beautiful timber framing and stamped decorative concrete. The view of the countryside is breathtaking, creating a perfect backdrop for the most important moments of the day.

Guests enjoyed cocktail hour in the large covered patio complete with plenty of covered seating and a beautiful and expansive outdoor bar while we explored the grounds for photos with the family and bridal party. There’s plenty of variety in places for beautiful photos, including a hayfield, forest of ferns, and the beautiful stone steps in front of the venue itself.

I can’t say enough about how much fun I had with this joy-filled, kind, generous, AMAZING couple. They truly embodied the radiance and happiness that translate into emotion-filled photos and even more spectacular memories. I first met the bride when she was a bridesmaid in another wedding I photographed in 2020, and since then we’ve been able to create some more sweet memories when she and her fiancé flew me out to Washington state to create some epic engagement photos in the Hoh Rainforest.

The entire wedding they they both could not stop crying and smiling - I could just tell by reading their faces that they were thinking “Oh my god, we are finally married!” Just to reiterate how cute these two are, enjoy the story of the proposal in Alicia’s words:

“I told Mike when we started dating that I didn't care how he proposed, just as long as he did it. I said that he could even propose with a Ring Pop and I would be happy, but it had to be the blue or red one. When the proposal got closer, he started hiding ring pops around our home and in my belongings for me to find. On the day that he proposed, that morning, he gave me a blue one. I didn't piece together the colors/flavor hint until after he told me it was intentional. My sister had asked me to take pictures of her and her fiance since they had gotten engaged earlier in the year, so we went to Acorn Street in Boston. When we got there, she was asking for help with poses for she and her fiance to do, but was having a difficult time with the direction and said "Here, just show me what you want and we will recreate it." Little did I know that it was her way of taking my camera to set up a pose for Mike to propose with!”

We ended the night with a huge group-hug-turned-sing-along of Country Roads, a private last dance between the happy couple, and an epic cold-sparks send off (again, another BRILLIANT move by this venue for offering that as an add-on!) I hope you enjoy the highlights of the amazing day below, and another huge thank you to the wonderful vendors who made it all possible: