Photography and videography, five hours of each, sit inside the wedding package here. So do florals, a DJ and MC, up lighting, a photo booth, a wedding cake, an ice sculpture and 75 printed invitations with response cards. Zola publishes that inclusion list in full, and it is the clearest signal of what The Sands actually sells: an all inclusive wedding rather than a room with catering attached. The building is directly on the Atlantic at 1395 Beech Street in Atlantic Beach, with a beachfront space Zola rates to 700 seated. No per person rate is published by anyone.
There is no unit price here, so the two anchors are a $25,000 starting total and a $55,000 typical spend, both from The Knot. That is a $30,000 planning range, which is not a budget. Because the package already contains photography, video, DJ and florals, the comparison you need is against a room rate plus those vendors hired separately. The unpublished service charge sits on top of whichever number you land on.
We read the venue's own site including its weddings and event pages, plus its Knot, WeddingWire, Zola and Eventective listings, on 10 September 2026. Checked September 2026. First party means the venue’s own site or rate card; marketplace means The Knot, WeddingWire, Zola, Wedding Spot or similar. Nothing here is averaged or estimated.
Capacity is contradicted four ways, from 300 on WeddingWire and Eventective to 700 first party and 1,000 seated on Zola, and no rain or wind policy is published for a ceremony space that sits on open Atlantic beach.
Zola's listing sets out what the package covers, and it is broader than the Long Island norm. Cocktail hour, five hours of photography and five of videography, a premium liquor package, floral arrangements. A bridal attendant and a party hostess. A full sit down dinner with dessert, DJ and MC, intelligent lighting and up lighting, two plasma screens, a photo booth, the cake and decorative linens. Then 75 invitations with response cards, and an ice sculpture.
That structure changes how you should compare quotes. A venue selling $150 per person plus a photographer you hire yourself and a band you hire yourself is not comparable to a single number that already contains both. It also raises a question nobody publishes an answer to: whether any of the bundled vendors can be swapped for one you have already chosen, and what the package price does if you drop one. WeddingWire lists outside vendors among the services offered, which is not the same as a policy permitting substitution.
Ask for the package breakdown line by line. If the photographer is included, ask which studio, how many shooters, and what happens to the price if you bring your own.
Most Long Island waterfront venues sit on Great South Bay, Hempstead Harbor or Long Island Sound, which are calm, sheltered and photograph like lakes on a still day. The Sands faces open ocean. The beachfront space is used for ceremonies, cocktail hours and banquets alike, and Zola rates it to 700 seated.
Ocean frontage brings ocean weather. Wind on an exposed Atlantic beach in April or October will move a ceremony indoors faster than rain will, and no source we read publishes a rain policy, a wind threshold or a move indoors deadline for this venue. Zola lists indoor, outdoor and covered outdoor options, so a fallback plainly exists, but it exists as an inference rather than a contract term.
There is also a seasonal beach club on the same property under a separate domain, and a related food emporium. Neither publishes dates or history. If the beach club is operating on your wedding date, ask what that means for parking, access and noise on the sand during your ceremony.
Their own weddings page says up to 700 people for cocktail hours, ceremonies and banquets. WeddingWire says up to 300, with a minimum of 100. The Knot says 300 plus while separately referencing a maximum of 700. Zola says up to 1,000 seated overall, with the beachfront space alone at 700. Eventective says 300 maximum while quoting the venue's own 700 language on the same page.
That is the widest capacity spread in this batch, and it runs to a factor of three. Our working read is that 700 describes the beach and 300 describes an indoor room. No source states that, so we are printing all of them. Get one number tied to one named space before you commit.
The related figure that does hold up is the floor. WeddingWire lists a 100 guest minimum, and Zola describes the package as covering 100 to 600 guests. Those two are consistent, so a wedding under 100 is probably not a wedding this venue wants.
The Knot's pricing block for this venue shows figures of $750 and $1,500 without much context, and it would be easy to misread them as catering rates. WeddingWire's block labels the same numbers clearly: $750 is the reception site fee off peak, $1,500 is the reception site fee in peak season, and the ceremony site fee is $1,500 in both seasons.
So the only per event dollar figures published for The Sands are rental charges. WeddingWire states the site fee covers the bridal suite, chairs, china, cleanup, event planning, flatware, glassware, lighting and sound, linens, parking, setup and tables. The food, the bar and everything in the bundled package sit on top of that and are quoted only by phone.
The Knot and WeddingWire both show a $25,000 starting price as a whole event total, and The Knot adds that couples typically spend $55,000. Both carry the standard caveat that starting prices exclude service fees, taxes, gratuity and rental fees, and The Knot puts peak season at March through July and September through December. A $25,000 floor against a $55,000 typical spend is a very large gap to plan across.
There is no published end time, no overtime rate and no music curfew on the venue's site or on any marketplace listing we read. There is no exclusivity statement either. WeddingWire counts two event spaces and Zola counts three, so a second event running alongside yours is at least possible, and nothing published rules it out.
The service charge is equally blank. The Knot lists it as contact for price and repeats that starting prices exclude service fees, taxes and gratuity. No percentage, maitre d' fee or bridal attendant fee is published anywhere, although the Zola package list does say a bridal attendant and a party hostess are included. On a venue selling a bundled package, an unpublished percentage on top of that package is the single largest unknown in the budget.
This suits a couple who wants an ocean ceremony, a guest list somewhere between 100 and 300, and a single vendor handling most of the day. If you have no strong opinions about your photographer or your DJ, the bundle removes months of work. If you already have a photographer you love, the same bundle becomes something you are paying for twice.
It suits less well a couple with a list under 100, or one who needs a fixed all in figure early. The venue publishes no prices at all and directs everything to a phone number and an email address.
Get three things on paper. What the service charge percentage is and what it applies to. Which named space holds your guest count, since the published range runs from 300 to 1,000. And what happens to the ceremony, and to the price, when the wind comes off the Atlantic on your date.
An oceanfront Long Beach hotel with rooms upstairs, a rooftop pool deck ceremony and an enclosed 4,686 sq ft rooftop venue for about 200 guests.
Ceremony in the sand at a state park beach, cocktails on the boardwalk, a ballroom for 250, and $129 per person printed on their own site.
A ceremony on the ocean sand at Jones Beach with one 250 seat ballroom behind it, and a published guest range starting at 30.
A public Montauk beachfront hotel selling a full property buyout, with an event ceiling of 250 guests and beds for only 82 of them.
An Atlantic front Westhampton Beach club with a 220 guest ballroom, a private beach ceremony area, and 2026 memberships you do not need to buy.
The retractable glass roof is the reason to look, and The Knot's $10,000 starting figure is the only price published anywhere for this room.