The $5,500 All-Inclusive Wedding: How a Sunday at Scarborough House Works

By Josh & Meika Darville4 min readWedding Planning
Outdoor wedding ceremony at dusk on the historic Scarborough House lawn in Stantonsburg, NC, an all-inclusive Eastern NC wedding venue

What if planning a wedding took one phone call?

Most couples spend a year planning a wedding. They call caterers. They compare photographers. They read florist reviews at midnight. It is a part-time job nobody asked for.

There is another way to do it. At Scarborough House in Stantonsburg, North Carolina, we built a wedding package where the planning is already done. It is called the All-Inclusive Micro Wedding. It costs $5,500. It covers up to 30 guests. And you can book it without making a single vendor call.

What all-inclusive really means here

The 1821 Scarborough House white estate house near Raleigh, NC
The 1821 Scarborough House white estate house near Raleigh, NC

The word gets thrown around a lot in the wedding world. So let us be plain about it. For $5,500, here is what is handled:

You bring the people you love. We take care of the rest. The vendors are people we have worked with many times. We know who does great work here because we have watched them do it.

Why Sunday is the secret

Here is something most couples never think about. Saturdays book first at every venue in the country. But a Sunday wedding is the same estate, the same oak trees, the same golden light over the same open fields. The only thing that changes is the day on the invitation.

Our micro weddings run on Sundays, or on a last-minute off-peak Saturday when one happens to be open. We keep prime Saturdays for full weekend weddings. That is exactly why Sunday dates stay open longer, and why this package can cost $5,500 instead of five figures.

Sunday weddings have quiet perks too. Your out-of-town family often finds cheaper flights. Vendors have more open dates. And a Sunday afternoon ceremony rolls into a golden hour that photographers love. You can check the exact sunset time for any date with our free Golden Hour Calculator.

Who this package fits

Scarborough House estate and lawn wedding venue near Raleigh
Scarborough House estate and lawn wedding venue near Raleigh

The micro wedding is built for couples who want the beauty and the meaning without the months of planning. That tends to be:

Thirty guests is not a small wedding. It is your parents, your siblings, your grandparents, and the friends who would help you move. Every person there knows you. That is a room full of love, not a room full of plus-ones you met once.

What the day feels like

You arrive in the morning. The bridal suite upstairs is yours for getting ready. The ceremony happens outside, under the oaks or facing the open farmland, wherever you choose. Dinner and dancing follow, and the amplified music plays until 11 PM. After that, the night moves quietly to the fire pit, the way the best nights here always end.

If you want to see how couples set up a ceremony for 30 chairs, try our free Ceremony Seating Planner. And if you are counting plates and drinks, the Food and Drink Calculator does the math for you.

How it compares to a full weekend

Historic Scarborough House estate under a blue sky
Historic Scarborough House estate under a blue sky

Our signature package is the full Friday to Sunday estate weekend at $10,500. Your people stay overnight in 13 bedrooms that sleep 28 overnight guests in standard bedroom beds, plus one bonus twin for 29 fixed overnight bed spaces. It is a house party wrapped around a wedding, and for big families it replaces thousands of dollars in hotel rooms.

The micro wedding is the other door into the same estate. One beautiful day instead of three. Thirty guests instead of a hundred and fifty. Vendors handled instead of hunted. Some couples compare both and pick the weekend. Some pick the Sunday. There is no wrong answer, and the pricing page lays both out with nothing hidden.

Why we publish the price

You may have noticed something rare on this page: an actual number. Most venues in North Carolina make you fill out a form and wait for a sales call to learn what anything costs. We put our pricing on the website on purpose. If $5,500 works for your budget, we would love to talk. If it does not, we just saved you a phone call. Either way, you deserve to know.

See it before you decide

Sunflower-lined wedding ceremony setup at Scarborough House
Sunflower-lined wedding ceremony setup at Scarborough House

You can take the virtual tour right now from your couch. There are videos, photos of the grounds, and a full gallery of real weddings held here. When you are ready, book an in-person tour on the same page. Walk the lawn, stand under the oaks, and picture your thirty favorite people right there with you.

One call. One number. One really good day. That is the whole idea.