Cool Event Ideas

Artist Janet Echelman and Google Creative Lab's Aaron Koblin installed an eye-popping aerial sculpture at the TED Conference in Vancouver. The sculpture was suspended 745 feet between the 24-story Fairmont Waterfront and the Vancouver Convention Center for an unmissable visual centerpiece more than twice the size of the artist's largest previous sculpture. Passersby could use their cell phones to control the piece's lighting, which was provided by Graphics eMotion and Kinetic Lighting.

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.

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.

At Cisco Live San Francisco, organizers created visually appealing, shareable elements throughout three buildings of the Moscone Center.

The event's footprint grew from a 28,000-square-foot hotel ballroom in 2013 to the 43,000-square-foot space at the convention center.

Amaryllis used 20- by 12-foot pallet wood sections to create the center structures for the food pavilions. On the larger stations, chalkboards covered the wood with images affiliated with the station's sponsor.

The chalkboard drawings also included the menu of items served at each station.

Onomonomedia and Amaryllis worked together to create a photo opportunity outside the ballroom using a custom chalkboard drawings of Washington landmarks, echoing the decor used inside for the food pavilions.

A draft-only bar on the upper level of the ballroom overlooking the main event floor served Heineken and Newcastle beers.

A pavilion sponsored by the Citi Open tennis tournament focused on sports-event staples such as hot dogs, pretzel sticks with dipping sauces, and buffalo wings paired with Asian slaw, pasta salad, or potato salad.

Amaryllis also set up a lounge area for Citi Open and its guests with black leather chairs and a glass coffee table encasing tennis balls and paraphernalia.

Nearly 200 tables covered the floor around the food stations for event sponsors.

At food stations sponsored by Chile, dishes included ceviche and marinated shrimp with avocado pebre. Coordinating with the food, the chalkboard centerpiece depicted scenes of the country's harbors and fishing boats.

One of the most popular dishes at the Chilean station: grilled salmon over a rustic quinoa salad.

Chile served a traditional dessert made with Chilean olive oil and yogurt mousse topped with a berry compote.

Australia served Pavlovas—white meringue topped with berries—for dessert, a dish named for 1920s Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova after one of her ballet tours in the region.

Events DC sponsored a food pavilion and a champagne ice bar, while Amaryllis provided a lounge with circular white couches.

Rather than serving wine, as many countries did, the Peru pavilion served a cocktail made with the Macchu Pisco spirit, passion fruit, Earl Grey tea, and apple bitters.

Nearly 1,900 people attended the award show and dinner, after which they hit the dance floor to the sounds of the band Onyx and late-night DJ Neekola.

In Kansas City, the American Heart Association's Heart Walk displayed a live feed of social media posts in a large, custom-made hub that prominently promoted the event hashtag and also became a popular photo backdrop.

At the Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS' Dining by Design benefit in New York in 2012, David Stark's installation for Benjamin Moore used real books and hand-made pop-up books to highlight the concept behind the brand's slogan: “A whole new chapter in paint color technology is being written.”

For a holiday event for Herbalife, Sterling Engagements designed tabletop vignettes using metallic and glass objects in visually interesting and varied shapes.

At a screening of the James Brown biopic Get on Up in Washington in July, André Wells incorporated such objects as old-school-style microphones and records into floral centerpieces to channel the movie’s musical premise.

Floral and event design company Amaryllis hosted an industry New Year's Eve party in Washington where a golden bust surrounded by an orb was part of an effort to weave in some statement-making European flair.

For an event for Munchkin baby products in Los Angeles in November, Jeannie Savage of Details Details used toys on the tabletops to "evoke childhood memories," she said, for the bloggers, event planners, and influential mom guests in attendance.

At the Miami Heat Charitable Fund annual gala in January, A Joy Wallace Catering, Design & Special Events created a tropical-looking table with centerpieces comprising Mokara orchids, calla lilies, and roses with accents of blue thistle—all built around a 3-D acrylic cube that encased replicas of the three Miami Heat championship rings.

For the 2010 St. Patrick’s Episcopal Day School's sports-theme benefit in Washington, held in the school's gymnasium, centerpieces were oversize versions of athletic objects by commercial sculptor A.J. Strasser.

The Bafta Los Angeles Tea Party, held on Golden Globes weekend in Los Angeles, used various decor pieces and objects to advance its British theme—including a Union Jack-splashed tea kettle holding white roses.

During Golden Globes weekend this year in Los Angeles, W hosted an event at A.O.C. in celebration of its picks for so-called "Hollywood It girls." Covered glass dishes on the tabletops provided feminine flair alongside pink blooms.

At the Lakewood Ranch Community Fund gala in Bradenton, Florida, in 2007, coffee beans filled cigar boxes on high-top tables to match the event's tropical theme and mood.

In what could be described as a meta interpretation of a traditional floral centerpiece, David Stark used twine to create flower-shaped centerpieces at the Museum of Arts and Design's Visionary Awards gala in New York in 2007.

In September, the renovated Riverside ballroom at Austin, Texas's Radisson Hotel & Suites Downtown opened with a food-centric event that saw produce contained in veggie cartons as decor.

Rock candy made for a more budget-friendly and unexpected—not to mention edible—centerpiece at Chicago's Children's Ball in 2008.