Table decorations

The “Facing Center” iPad centerpieces from Keep Interacting allow organizers to incorporate photos and other information into an event’s table decor. Launched earlier this year, the iPads display a slideshow of photos, product images, sponsor information, or other content provided by the event’s host ahead of time. Then, at the event, the company provides a photographer to take photos that are instantly added to the display. Using the touch screens, guests can also share the images on social media, send them via email, and order printed copies to pick up from a kiosk on site.

At a 50th anniversary party for Dior Nails, 2013 BizBash Innovator Garin Baura created a performance-art-style centerpiece inspired by artist Holten Rower’s layered, colorful poured paintings: As various courses came out, staffers also served platters of brightly hued flowers which were scattered onto the all-white table. “People were taking flowers and throwing them around—it loosened things up and made the dinner experience more playful,” Baura said.

The 13th annual Friends of the High Line benefit, held at New York’s Pier 57 in May, centered on photographs of the High Line taken through the years. In lieu of the event’s usual foliage-heavy centerpieces, printed photographs were scattered atop raised Lucite platforms, which were eventually also used to hold the night's family-style dinner platters.

In Miami, the dinner tables at a Star Trek-theme vintner dinner—one of 17 celebrity chef-helmed events at private homes held as part of the 13th annual Naples Winter Wine Festival in January—offered centerpieces with iPads embedded on the sides that displayed the evening’s menu, updating as each course was served.

At the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum's Butterfly Ball in Chicago in May, the gala had a farm-like atmosphere. Tables were decked with miniature gardens potted with tomatoes, colorful peppers, asparagus, and kale; around the centerpieces, fairy lights in miniature Mason jars added to the elegant yard-party vibe.

At the 125th anniversary gala for the National Geographic Society in June, the “Land, Sea, and Sky” theme inspired an array of custom tables and toppers, including glacier ice sculptures. Select Lucite tables were not topped with any decorations, but instead held water and plant life, or natural objects like seashells.

Instead of centerpieces, David Stark Design created lazy Susans rimmed in white LED lights that made sharing the antipasto easier at New York’s Robin Hood Foundation benefit in May.

Fifteen fashion and interior designers each designed their own table at the Partnership With Children’s Gala in April. Interior design firm Paul and Martha L.L.C. created an attention-grabbing tabletop by using a $90,000 sculpture of pink roses as a centerpiece. Created by artist Will Ryman, the oversize flowers were made of materials including plaster, paint, and aluminum mesh.

The Starlight Children's Foundation hosted its Starlight Gala, sponsored by Toys "R" Us, at Toronto's Fairmont Royal York Hotel in April. The event’s circus-inspired ideas included dinner tables topped with miniature Ferris wheels that held cupcakes with colorful frosting.

Centerpieces were appropriately made of glowing, vintage photo slides at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Snap Gala in October, which benefitted the Photography Gala Fund.

Centerpieces at the Whitney Museum of American Art gala, held in October, encouraged playful interaction, featuring silver paint cans holding breadsticks and also Sharpie markers that guests could use to draw on the canvas tablecloths.

In March, guests at the California Science Center’s Discovery Ball dined under the wings of NASA’s retired Endeavour space shuttle. In keeping with the space exploration theme, illuminated tables were topped with celestial decor elements like mini solar systems in glass bowls.

Russell Simmons’s Art for Life benefit, held in the Hamptons in July, featured an idyllic theme—“Field of Dreams”—that came to life in the whimsical centerpieces. Floating kites suspended over each table and anchored to wheatgrass flats had colorful signs on their tails that held the names of artistic vocations such as “dancer” and “poet.”

Held in April, the Catalina Island Conservancy Ball’s campfire theme was reflected in the decor, which included centerpieces of illuminated apothecary jars filled with the makings of a classic campsite snack: s’mores.

"Budgets for signature drinks are on the rise again. We are getting a lot of requests for welcome beverages for corporate events, especially with the huge cocktail craze," says Steve Sanchez, chief marketing officer at Camp Hill, Pennsylvania-based catering and events company JDK Group.

For the Cirque du Soleil-style holiday party for Traffic Control Services, held at its corporate office in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, in December 2014, JDK Group's culinary team created inventive food presentations, including torched meat.

A chef prepared a cloud of nitrogen popcorn at the JDK Group-produced circus-inspired bash.

For Comcast Spotlight's '70s shindig at the Chameleon Club in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in November 2014, designed by the JDK Group, guests sipped on raspberry-garnished champagne and Chambord cocktails with decorative LED ice cubes.

At an event for the Knot, held at the New York Public Library in October 2014, executive chef Robin Selden of Marcia Selden Catering & Event Planning hung small crystal orbs filled with two types of salad—a fruit and kale one with shaved coconut and a wheatberry salad with mushrooms, caramelized shallots, and roasted fennel—from a tree.

For the Knot event, Selden created a next-level breadstick bar. Hand-rolled breadsticks were served with flavored dips like spiced butternut squash, curried cream, and ricotta and fava bean, along with carrot and ginger and truffled wild mushroom soups. "You'd never guess it's a less expensive option because of the abundance of food on the table," the chef says.

At a party celebrating the Toms for Target partnership in Los Angeles last year, colorful nonalcoholic drinks were presented in glass decanters.

Guests could get toasty (and tipsy) at the hot chocolate bar with alcoholic mix-ins, which was set up at a private holiday party, held at 26 Bridge in December 2014 and produced by New York-based event firm Rock Paper Scissors Events.

At the How I Met Your Mother holiday party in Los Angeles at Fox Studios in December 2013, the show's cast and crew ate and played at a gingerbread-decorating station set up by Marina del Ray-based Schaffer's Genuine Foods.

Deutsch LA's Studio 54-theme holiday party, held at Hangar 8 in Santa Monica, California, in December 2014, featured a new classic—peppermint cake pops by Schaffer's Genuine Foods.

JDK Group served fruity spritzers at a private holiday party at Linwood Estate in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in January.