Inside Nemacolin’s Extravagant Summer Solstice Celebration

Set on more than 2,200 idyllic acres in southwestern Pennsylvania’s Laurel Highlands, Nemacolin has been a favorite resort of those in the know since 1987, with every conceivable amenity a luxury traveler could want. Last month, the resort’s three award-winning hotels—The Chateau (modeled after The Ritz in Paris), The Grand Lodge (which recently reopened after a complete renovation that transformed its 91 rooms into 50 or so suites), and Falling Rock (a Forbes five-star winning tribute to Frank Lloyd Wright)—were booked to capacity with a couple hundred guests, including many of today’s most acclaimed actors, musicians, models, designers and athletes. Everyone flew in to join owner/CEO Maggie Hardy to kick off the summer with what might well prove to be the year’s most scintillating shindig, the Nemacolin Summer Solstice Celebration.

The three-day, two-night celebration kicked off with cocktails on the terrace of The Chateau. There, a hedgerow maze had been set up, with models who beckoned guests who’d donned their finest garden party attire, including Marcia Gay Harden, Marisa Tomei, Georgina Chapman and Adrien Brody, Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka, Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly. After making our way through the maze, Gingi Beltran, Carole Radziwill, Samantha Ronson and I made our way to the front of the hotel, where we were given parasols to shade ourselves as Hardy was joined by the weekend’s emcee, Jimmy Fallon, and cut the ribbon celebrating the grand reopening of The Chateau—all this while an orchestra played and dancers performed an aerial ballet while rappelling down the side of the hotel.

Lionel Richie / Photo: Courtesy of BFA

Then it was onto one of the waiting shuttles, which whisked us to our next location, a glass pavilion that had been erected for the weekend and was filled with comfortable tables and couches, heaping buffets and palm trees on which the coconuts had been replaced by disco balls. There, after dinner, we joined Nolan Gerard Funk, Tyson Beckford, Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater, Fred Couples and Michelle Wie West for an up-close-and-personal performance by Lionel Richie, who had everyone on their feet as he performed his hits. Then he was surprised on stage by Fallon and Hardy, who presented him with an enormous cake to celebrate his 75th birthday, at which point we all sang “Happy Birthday” to the legendary entertainer before he closed out the show with “All Night Long” and invited guests to join him onstage. I didn’t go, but Beltran and Radziwill did and were living!

After the concert, the ladies and I sashayed over to Mulligans, which had been transformed for the night into a tropical nightclub with Ronson spinning a deliciously danceable set on the ones-and-twos. After taking in the drone show over the lake and boogie-oogie-oogieing, we bid our farewells and boarded the waiting shuttle, which took us back to our respective hotels.

Sitar player on the property grounds / Photo: Courtesy of BFA

The next day guests had a plethora of activities from which to choose—including treatments at the Woodlands Spa and Salon, golfing with PGA pros Fred Couples, Michelle Wie West and Nick Faldo on one of the resort’s two Pete Dye-designed championship golf courses, and a tennis clinic with the legendary John McEnroe—but by late afternoon, all and sundry were back in their luxe accommodations, getting ready for the black-tie soiree ahead.

This time, the waiting shuttles took us to Falling Rock, where, on the Sunset Terrace, such notables as Michele Hicks, Nicole Ari Parker, Lois Freedman, Ashley Sherrod and Kane Manera, Tommy Dunn, Eddie Roche and Hunter Kohl, Honey Balenciaga, Pablo Ferrari and Garrett Neff kibbitzed in their finest finery while sipping on cocktails presented in glasses in the shape of Pearl (Nemacolin’s jovial avian mascot) and nibbling appetizers by renowned chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten (who was personally overseeing the night’s culinary offerings).

Then it was down a path along which several sitar players serenaded us to yet another pavilion that had been erected for the weekend, this time for the seated dinner prepared by Vongerichten, which began with a heaping portion of JG Select Caviar on a bed of yellowfin tuna tartare, continued with a roast carrot and avocado salad with seeds, citrus and crème fraîche, and culminated with a juicy Wagyu beef tenderloin, followed by an array of desserts.

Lily Rabe and Neil Patrick Harris / Photo: Courtesy of BFA

Once again, it was a night of unforgettable performances that had everybody on their feet, spinning, laughing and dancing, beginning with the dulcet tones of Michael Bublé and his orchestra. Bublé—who had performed for late Nemacolin founder Joe Hardy on his 100th birthday—joked that he wanted Maggie Hardy to adopt him so he could move to Nemacolin (we all felt the same way). He had everyone’s spirits soaring, especially with a clever tribute to Elvis Presley. Then came the “surprise” guest, Lady Gaga, who got everyone in a tizzy performing songs from her Jazz + Piano repertoire with her bandleader Brian Newman and his incredible group.

Following this back-to-back concert, Nick Cannon took to the DJ booth and kept the party going. I missed a text from Newman, telling me he was at the bar, but I wasn’t checking my phone as I was dancing my proverbial ass off with Michele Hicks in a cluster that also included Carole Radziwill, Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater, Nolan Funk, David Burtka and Neil Patrick Harris, and Marcia Gay Harden. But I know how my friend’s mind works, and found him après in the Hardy Room, the well-appointed cigar lounge in The Chateau, where I joined him and his band and members of Bublé’s orchestra for a late-night drink and a cigar.

Aerialist at Nemacolin Summer Solstice Celebration / Photo: Courtesy of BFA

The following morning, Beltran and I joined Harden at the farewell Pajama Jammy Jam brunch, where we bid our farewells to the assemblage before the jet came (to Nemacolin’s private landing strip) to fly the final six of us back to Teterboro.

There is so much to say about Nemacolin, a truly magical place, perhaps best summed up as delivering luxury through the prism of Willy Wonka. Meanwhile, after this unforgettable weekend, I think it’s apt to posit that Maggie Hardy is the Auntie Mame of experiential luxury hospitality!