On New Year's Eve, Chicago-based artist collective and production company Canvas hosted a bash called "Voyager." Held at Moonlight Studios, the event was meant to evoke an otherworldly space, and the DJ booth was constructed out of glowing green materials that resembled moon rocks.
The dance floor is an obvious place to make an impact. For a private event, designer Preston Bailey created a unique dance floor that served as the evening's focal point. Hundreds of flowers were covered in Plexiglas, creating a massive floral carpet. "The result was a statement piece that allowed guests to dance on air," said Bailey.
The floor can also be an unexpected place for logos, sponsor information, or branding. The TEDActive conference in 2013 took over some of the host venue's Spanish tiles for its own messaging. The special tiles at La Quinta resort in the Palm Springs area also guided attendees along the walkways to the various event venues on the sprawling property.
Floor decor can serve a bigger purpose. During Chicago’s Pitchfork Music Festival in 2015, carpet company Flor handed out some 5,000 squares of carpet so that guests could make their own carpeted seating areas on the grass—creating a functional and eye-catching decor idea. When the weather turned stormy during the festival, attendees used the carpets to cover muddy spots on the grounds.
Energy Floors offers human-powered, interactive dance floors for event rentals worldwide. The eight-inch-deep tiles each house small generators; the tiles compress when stepped on, activating the generators to convert the kinetic energy produced by the dancers into electricity. The power can be used to activate the colorful LED light tubes inside the tiles that respond to the movement of dancers or nearby electrical systems.
Expanding wall and ceiling decor down to the floor can also have a big impact. At the Museum of Contemporary Art's 2015 Benefit Art Auction in Chicago, colorful stripe-on-stripe decor expanded all the way to the floor, creating an optical illusion. Ghost chairs and striped tables allowed the design to feel fully immersive.
Sometimes all you need is some masking tape. During Austin's 2014 South by Southwest, event production agency MKG brightened up a dark room using neon masking tape and ultraviolet lighting, creating an edgy, Pop Art-inspired look for the party for online magazine xoJane.com.
The Brussels Flower Carpet is a 19,375-square-foot mosaic of 700,000 intricately arranged begonias that comes to life every two years for five days during August in the central square of the European capital city. Meant to incite conversation about nature, cities, and art, the designs have typically incorporated themes from Belgium’s history since the first carpet was created in 1971. It takes 100 gardeners four hours to arrange the petals by hand.
The Metropolitan Opera celebrated the opening of its latest production, Otello, with a post-show reception and dinner on October 9. Designed and produced by Tyger Productions and held on the Met’s Grand Tier, guests sat at 24-foot mirrored tables that reflected the dramatic architecture. Tall gilded crystal candelabras holding boxwood topiaries ran down the center of the tables, while gold Venetian glass chargers and flatware added to the look.
The Ontario Science Centre hosted its fund-raiser, the LG Innovators' Ball, in late October. In honor of the new exhibition “Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration,” the sixth annual gala had a retro "Fly Me to the Moon" theme, designed by McNabb Roick Events. In the dining room, retro rocket ships acted as centerpieces with red and orange flowers standing in as a "flame" at the base.
The women’s board of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra hosted the Symphony Ball on September 29. After a concert conducted by Ricardo Muti, guests headed to a dinner-dance at the Fairmont Chicago. To underscore the “Seize the Night” theme, designer Jeffrey Foster of Event Creative lit centerpieces with glowing fiber optics.
The 13th annual Storybook Ball was held October 20 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Sound of Music-themed decor included centerpieces of wildflowers accented with tiny guitars, designed by Winston Flowers.
For the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Dinner by the Sea fund-raiser held at the New York Aquarium on October 4, Kerry Quade: Handmade Quade designed centerpieces that included minimal flowers: Tall cylinder vases were filled with black branches, succulents, and colored sand.
The greater Washington, D.C., chapter of the National Association for Catering & Events held its Capital Style gala on November 11, which had a "Once Upon a Time" theme. Several of the dinner tables, designed by Edge Floral, displayed dramatic branches growing out of a base of greenery, peonies, and roses.
Caviar Dreams produced a pink-carpeted gala for Total Impact Resource Centers at the Penthouse at AT&T Center in Los Angeles on October 27. Candy-colored centerpieces sat atop crystal candelabras, and aqua-blue glassware popped against silver linens and Chiavari chairs.
The Lyric Opera of Chicago kicked off its 58th season with a performance of Richard Strauss’s Elektra on October 6. Following the performance, the Opera Ball was held at the Radisson Blu Aqua Hotel, where the moody decor by Heffernan Morgan Designs included towering arrangements of berry-covered branches.
LUNGevity Foundation's second annual Musical Celebration of Hope was held at the Mellon Auditorium in Washington on September 14. Produced by Events by Andre Wells, the event had a Spanish theme. Tables were covered in striped linens and displayed brightly colored tropical flowers in glass containers of various heights. Decor was handled by Design Foundry and florals were by Blue Vanda Designs.
To fete the launch of the "Imagining the Lowline" fund-raising initiative, the project's co-founders hosted an "anti-gala" dinner and exhibit on September 13 at the Essex Street Warehouse in New York. Van Wyck & Van Wyck brought in reclaimed wood dining tables and decorated them with candlelight and centerpieces of potted rosemary, lavender, mint, geranium leaves, and olive branches.
The Knock Out Abuse gala held at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington had a Moulin Rouge theme, designed by Events by Andre Wells. Amaryllis topped dinner tables covered in black-sequined linens with centerpieces of black plumes and deep red roses.
To showcase Kenneth Cole’s fall collection, Mark Addison of EventStyle produced an intimate dinner for fashion and beauty bloggers. Held inside the brand’s flagship store at Grand Central Terminal, the table design was inspired by the textures, colors, and materials from the new line. Cole’s love of found objects led the EventStyle team to design metal pipe candelabras that were placed at each corner of the table. The dinner was based around eight theme words, which were projected onto a fringed light installation that hung in the center of the space.
The Chicago Botanic Garden’s fall fund-raiser, the Harvest Ball, took place on garden grounds September 22. To underscore the autumnal theme, Botanicals' arrangements of roses also held golden gourds and pumpkins.
In September, New Yorkers for Children celebrated its fall gala at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York. David Stark’s table designs had an organic look with high and low glass containers filled with moss, ferns, and candles, and low arrangements in birch-wrapped vases.
The Miami Children’s Hospital Foundation’s Diamond Ball was held on October 27 at the JW Marriott Marquis in Miami. The theme, “A Frosted Masquerade Affair,” was translated by WOW Factor Marketing Group to glitzy effect in the ballroom: Tall structures dripping with crystals alternated with centerpieces of chandeliers enclosed in Lucite boxes and Lucite candelabras holding white floral balls on dinner tables.
The Breeders' Cup took over Santa Anita Park on November 2 and 3. Kicking off all the festivities was a reception at the mayor's residence, the Getty House, on Halloween night. BrownHot Events' masquerade-inspired design for the affair included giving the tables a dramatic look with tall black candlesticks and Chameleon chairs from Classic Party Rentals.
The Hammer Museum’s 10th annual Gala in the Garden was held in Los Angeles on October 6. The tables, featuring floral arrangements by Dandelion Ranch, were covered in black velvet and topped with mirrored glass hurricanes containing square pillar candles and surrounded by bud vases filled with spider mums, air plants, and ferns.
Held in October, the 10th annual After School Matters gala took place in the grand ballroom of Chicago’s Navy Pier. Colorful mosaic-decorated flower pots—created by teens in the Mosaic Collaborative program—adorned the dinner tables.
Chicago’s Luna Negra Dance Theater threw a gala in September. Designed by Kehoe Designs, several dinner tables displayed centerpieces elevated on platforms.
Held in late September at Skylight One Hanson in Brooklyn, BAM’s 30th Next Wave gala featured floral decor by Fleurs Bella. Some guests dined at the former bank's deposit slip tables, where the built-in lamps were engulfed in greenery, roses, and calla lilies.
Elle magazine held its annual Women in Hollywood Awards in Los Angeles on October 15. Caravents handled the event design and production, creating a minimalist look with coral-colored floral arrangements set atop matte mirrored Perspex rectangles.
