A note on privacy: We do not disclose details about our guests or their events without permission. Private celebrations are described only in general terms, and names and photos appear only when a guest has said yes.

Before it was a ballroom, this room was Murphy's post office.

The building went up in late 1949, built by E.H. Brumby, and opened its doors in March of 1950 as the United States Post Office for Murphy, North Carolina. In the decades after, it was a grocery store, and eventually it became what it is today — The Ballroom, an event space on Hiwassee Street in the middle of downtown.

The Brumby family lived right next door. Mrs. Brumby was a builder herself and put up another building in town, and the brick addition E.H. built onto his textile mill still stands — it's the Murphy School of Dance now.

There's a piece of our own family in the building, too. The stained glass over the front doors, with the two fleur-de-lis, was installed by our parents. We're from Louisiana originally, and the fleur-de-lis is our stamp — our family's mark on this building's long history.

Today the room holds about a hundred people, and it changes costumes the way it always has: a wedding on Saturday, a town hall on Tuesday, a reunion the next weekend, with dinner catered from our family's restaurant right across the street. The walls have been a lot of things. We like what they are now.