With a seasonally appropriate A Midsummer Night's Dream theme, the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences' Five Star Diamond Awards ceremony took place on June 25 at the Addison in Boca Raton, Florida. Benny Ofer of Daniel Events designed the event, giving it the look of an enchanted garden. Describing his overall vision as "vintage and Victorian, inspired by the color and architecture of the Addison," Ofer festooned the courtyard and main dining room with dragonwood tree stands and hung grapevines from the ceiling.
Chicago design firm INDO uses sustainably sourced materials for installations, window displays, and interiors. Recently, founders Linsey Burritt and Crystal Hodges decked a tent ceiling with 200 sheets of red screen-printed polypropylene from a local recycling company. The duo is currently working on designing an event-friendly collection of rentable backdrops and self-supported structures.
At the Audi preparty, Event Eleven's Schubert said the backdrop wall had a graphic print meant to make a "bold, loud statement in the space."
Held on October 5, the evening included a dinner-dance at the Hilton Chicago. In the ballroom, lush golden trees from HMR Designs stood as centerpieces.
Available in the Los Angeles area from Town & Country Event Rentals, the oversize brass, nickel, and bronze Moroccan hanging lamps add an exotic touch to event spaces. Pair the lamps with the company’s new Kaleidoscope line, a colorful collection of modern furniture.
To represent the Food Network magazine, artist Clare Herron spent the event inside an 8- by 8-foot Plexiglas cube with stacks of back issues and a pair of scissors. Throughout the evening, she created a collage by taping magazine cutouts to the walls.
After the theater's performance of The Tempest at the Koch Theater, guests sat to dinner in a stormy environment designed by Bronson van Wyck. In the theater's promenade, seven 39-foot prop cyclones swirled up to the ceiling. In the dinner space, a hand-painted 180-foot storm scene wrapped one side of the balconies, and handmade paper cyclones stretched from the floor to the ceiling.
At HP's live music recording session in Los Angeles, on-site graphic artists translated YouTube users' comments into a highly visual backdrop for the track's video.
#2 Benefit
One of Washington society's most anticipated events, the Washington National Opera's annual ball raised $1.3 million for the cultural organization, an increase from last year. The event, with its reception at the residence of the Italian ambassador, celebrated several regions of Italy and its culture. Next: Spring 2014
#16 Benefit (up from #20)
This year the Shakespeare Theatre Company awarded Downton Abbey star Elizabeth McGovern with its William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre at the gala. The event drew 425 guests and raised $689,000. Next: October 2014
In 2010, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Lynda & Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion opened with a masquerade gala for 1,000 guests. Art from the Resnick's collection came to life by way of projections under the dinner tent.
A new art piece on this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival grounds called "Mirage," envisioned by festival art curator Paul Clemente and created and executed by experiential design and media company Pearl Media Productions, took the form and architecture of a mid-century Palms Springs mansion, standing at 40 feet tall, 80 feet wide, and 100 feet long. A total of 12 zones of high-tech HD projections made it appear that changing activities were taking place inside the home's rooms and its pool. The project required 18 gigabytes of custom content and more than 70 facets of individual video over the course of the six-day festival.
With so many brands vying for the attention of busy festivalgoers at this year's South by Southwest, marketers had to do more than simply host an event to make an impression. At the party for online magazine xoJane, event production agency MKG brightened up a dark room using neon masking tape and ultraviolet lighting, creating an edgy, Pop-Art-inspired look. Upstairs, guests were encouraged to take selfies with mirrors; images were printed by the Bosco to add onto the Shameless Selfie wall and were projected in the main room.
After a major move from California to Canada this year, the TED Conference wrapped in Vancouver on Friday. In Target's "Write the Next Chapter" social space, artist Daniel Duffy drew portraits of speakers using their quotes.
The National Cherry Blossom Festival kicked off March 20 with its signature Pink Tie Party at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington. Linder & Associates worked with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to create an outdoor lawn party atmosphere surrounding the stage and centrally located Penny Pitch bar in the atrium.
For the March 18 launch party for new Washington venue Dock5 at Union Market, producers Bruce Pike of Bruce Pike Productions and Bella Notte’s Sara Bauleke sought to bring the outdoors inside. The Garden Glam theme came to life with a mixture of live trees throughout the industrial space, combined with a wall-length forest gobo.
Jes Gordon’s design for the Fashion Institute of Technology was inspired by Pinocchio and the idea of being stranded inside the belly of a whale. As such, guests were seated within a scale reproduction of the upper half of a whale vertebrae.
In late January, Jodi Moraru of Evoke designed and planned a Mad Men-inspired corporate event at the National Building Museum in Washington. A lighting projection on the floor evoked the image of a falling man from the show's opening credits, while a black-and-white backdrop was inspired by Roger Sterling's office on the show.
At the Washington event, servers in retro-style uniforms—and with 1960s-style hairdos— shook up martinis at mirrored bars.
When throwing its annual Best New Chefs event, Food & Wine magazine usually opts for a new or recently opened location. But in April 2010, a Mad Men-inspired theme drove organizers to select a classic New York institution: the Four Seasons Restaurant. Organizers dressed the space with hanging feathered orbs, candles, and pink lighting.
Instead of a traditional red carpet, the stairs leading to the event space had a custom typography treatment that read “Best New Chefs.”
After an abundance of rustic-barnyard and vintage, Anthropologie-esque weddings, event planners are anticipating a wedding-style movement in the complete opposite direction. “We’re predicting less D.I.Y. and more clean, modern lines and color palettes,” says Tara Maxey, co-owner of the Los Angeles-based catering company Heirloom LA. “With all the D.I.Y. wedding details out there, expertly styled minimalism feels like the sophisticated alternative.”
Wedding planners Maria Cooke and Kelly Seizert of Ritzy Bee Events in Washington, D.C., agree: “We’re seeing more couples focusing less on dramatic color and more on classic combinations such as black and white, gray and white, and navy and cream.” The modern-minimalist theme will be reflected in the wedding menu, too: Instead of lavish buffet stations or decadent entrées, couples are moving towards healthier choices and smaller portions. Maxey says, “Gluttony has been overdone.”
Pictured, clockwise from left: Ritzy Bee Events created a reception lounge setup with a clean, neutral color palette; a wedding catered by Heirloom LA incorporated crisp, all-white decor; shooters of vegan carrot panna cotta were served during cocktail hour at a wedding catered by Heirloom LA.
In contrast to the modern-minimalist style, wedding professionals are also predicting a return to formality and dramatic opulence. “Say goodbye to Mason jars and burlap, and say hello to caviar and elegance,” says South Florida-based party planner Sara Renee Lowell of Sara Renee Events. “Wedding vendors are sick of couples bringing in the same rustic, vintage inspiration photos. Opulence is in.”
Which means the return of dramatic floral arrangements on pedestals, gleaming candelabras, and loads of professional lighting (translation: no more simple strands of café lights). For a recent wedding, New York event designer David Stark of David Stark Design and Production created a luxurious reception with a formal French garden theme: Sculpted hedges around the perimeter of the venue and structured dinner table centerpieces were juxtaposed against a lush, romantic canopy of flowers and glowing lanterns suspended overhead.
Pictured: David Stark created a formal French garden theme for a recent wedding reception.
