Events venue·Rozelle, NSW·2024
The Dockhouse
Venue enquiries that aren’t an Instagram DM
Couples and brand producers send a brief we can price — not a heart emoji
Client
Two owner-operators (Jess and Tom), one casual bar lead. Mid-week brand events and Saturday weddings. Neighbours are warehouses and a gym — parking and noise rules matter as much as the photos.
Engagement
Site, photography art direction, and enquiry ops. Jess owned copy; Tom owned floor plans. We did not touch ticketing or POS.
Duration
7 weeks
A 180-capacity warehouse venue in Rozelle was booking weddings and brand nights through Instagram DMs. We shipped a site with real packages, a lookbook that loads on a phone, and an enquiry that lands in one Airtable the owners both trust.
- Hospitality
- Venue
- Enquiries
Starting point
Pretty photos lived on Instagram. Serious couples DM’d ‘is 18 October free?’ and waited three days because Jess was on a site visit. Brand producers wanted a floor plan and a power spec; they got a story highlight. Two Google Docs of ‘packages’ disagreed on whether AV was included.
Challenge
They did not want a public calendar that competitors could scrape — or that showed empty Saturdays. Images were phone snaps in mixed light. The site had to say noise curfew and load-in hours without sounding like a council notice.
Approach
One package page per product: ceremony + reception, reception only, mid-week brand. Holds stay private — enquiry asks for dates and guest count; Jess marks hold/deposit in Airtable. We reshot dusk exteriors and one empty-room set so the lookbook is consistent. Floor plan and power spec sit as PDFs, not carousels.
How it ran
Discovery through launch — emphasis changes by client; this is how this one actually went.
- 1
Discovery
Sat through a Saturday changeover. Listed what producers ask in the first email.
- 2
Packages & legal-ish facts
Aligned the two Google Docs. Wrote curfew and load-in in plain English.
- 3
Design & photography
Dusk exterior, empty-room set, mobile crop test on Jess’s phone.
- 4
Build
Framer pages, Airtable, form fields that match how they already quote.
- 5
Launch
Instagram bio points at the site. Old Linktree retired. Two weeks of form tweaks.
What we shipped
- Package-led venue site with noise and load-in facts
- Lookbook stills that match on mobile
- Airtable enquiry + hold + deposit statuses
- Floor plan and power spec as downloadable PDFs
Outcomes
- →Enquiries arrive with dates, headcount, and which package they mean
- →Jess and Tom share one queue — no ‘I thought you replied’
- →Producers download floor plan and power spec without a back-and-forth
Stack
- Framer (site + package pages)
- Airtable (enquiries, hold dates, deposit status)
- Cloudflare (images, DNS)
- Calendar holds — no public live inventory
Constraints
- No public availability calendar
- POS and ticketing out of scope
- Council noise hours must stay visible — not buried in FAQ
What actually worked
Private holds instead of a live calendar. The site looks open; the diary stays theirs.
From the room
“I used to price weddings in my Notes app between DMs. Now the brief is in one place and Tom can see it.”
— Jess Hale, co-owner
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