The Seawane Club

1927, Devereux Emmet, and close to 1,000 trees removed in 2000

Emmet is the name that carries here. His other Long Island and metropolitan work includes Garden City Golf Club, National Golf Links of America and Congressional. At Seawane he built on John Auerbach's estate, and the attorney's Victorian mansion served as the first clubhouse.

The members bought the club outright in 1943, and a full membership buyout was completed in 1960. Robert Trent Jones redesigned the course in the 1960s. A restoration in 2000 cleared close to 1,000 trees to recover the open links character Emmet had laid out, and more recent coastal restoration work has been carried out with architect Jeff Stein.

That last item is the one to ask about. Coastal restoration on a 130 acre waterfront property in Hewlett Harbor is ongoing work, and a couple booking two years out should know which holes and which views are affected in their season.

The tent seats more people than the ballroom does

The Grand Ballroom is published at 300 plus guests. The seasonal Tent and Patio is published at 400 plus. That inversion is unusual and it shapes the decision: the largest room at this club is a temporary structure, so the biggest weddings here are outdoor season weddings by definition.

The Living Room, with a bar and fireplaces, is the third named space and reads as a cocktail hour room rather than a dinner room. The 18 hole course supplies the photographs.

Seasonal is the club's word, and it never names the months

The club describes the Tent and Patio as seasonal without publishing any months. The indoor spaces run year round. We are not going to guess at a date range for a Nassau tent, so the honest position is that the season is unpublished.

That is the first question on the call. Ask when the tent goes up, when it comes down, whether those dates move with the weather and what happens to a booking taken at the edge of the window. If your list is over 300, the answer decides your date rather than the other way round.

Non member access, stated first party, is the rare thing here

Most private clubs on the South Shore either say nothing about outside events or require a member to sponsor them. Seawane publishes the opposite position on its own Celebrations page, offering its event spaces and certain club facilities to members and non members alike.

No sponsorship requirement is stated anywhere we looked. There is no member introduction, no affiliation clause and no reciprocal club language on the events pages. If you have no connection to Hewlett Harbor golf, you can still make the call.

Catering and banquets are handled in house by the club's own team, and kosher celebrations are listed as a supported event type. No approved outside vendor list is published, and no outside caterer policy appears anywhere, so assume the kitchen is the kitchen and confirm it.

One price exists anywhere on the internet, and WeddingWire owns it

The club publishes no pricing of any kind. No per person rate, no food and beverage minimum, no guest minimum, no service charge, no maitre d' fee, no administrative fee. Enquiries go to the events inbox.

WeddingWire lists a $1,500 starting site fee, the same for peak and off peak, with stated inclusions covering the bridal suite, chairs, china, clean up, event planning, flatware, glassware, linens, set up and tables. It is a marketplace figure and it is not confirmed on the club's own site.

A $1,500 site fee at a 1927 golf club is a small number, which tells you the money is in the catering rather than the room. That is the normal structure for an in house club operation, and it means the per person rate you never see published is the number that decides your budget.

Three sources give three different capacities

The club says Grand Ballroom 300 plus and Tent and Patio 400 plus. The Knot says 300 plus for the venue. WeddingWire says up to 300, with the Grand Ballroom to 350. All three are printed here because none of them agree and we do not average.

The gap probably comes from seated versus standing counts and from whether the tent is included, but nobody says so. Ask for a seated dinner count for each space, with a dance floor and a band included in the layout.

One more open item: the club runs member operations alongside private events and publishes no one wedding at a time policy. On a member Saturday in June, find out what else is happening on the property and where those people will be.