SPACE EVENTS

A phalanx of female model staffers dressed in out-of-this-world space-age uniforms greeted guests as they arrived at the suburban Houston venue in Sugar Land.

The cocktail portion of the evening featured a series of interconnected all-white rooms, which guests entered into via an octagonal-shaped tunnel. A 32-foot-long walkway led from the spaceship-cum-cocktail area to the dinner space, which was styled to look like the surface of the moon.

The all-white odyssey-style "capsule" was a veritable homage to Omega and the storied relationship it has had with the space program since 1965. A full array of the Swiss watchmaker's iconic Speedmaster timepieces, spanning several decades, were on display.

While the event featured no live entertainment or DJ, prerecorded voices did play overhead throughout the cocktail portion—mimicking astronaut flight calls with sayings like, "Welcome aboard. The outside temperature is minus…" Complementing the white-noise background was a smoke effect, which was used not only to recreate the moon landing atmosphere, but also to usher guests to the start of dinner.

Bureau Betak transformed the Western Airways Hangar into a spectacular 20,000-square-foot party setting—the Omega Lunar Base—that flowed from the "space capsule" into a dramatic moonscape, where dinner was served beneath a starlit orb.

Five truckloads' worth of gravel combined with large rocks comprised the setting in which some 300 invited guests dined. More than 150 workers were enlisted to create the set, which was designed to transport guests to dinner on the surface of the moon.

Guests dined above a custom floor covered with crushed rock and gravel that had been mixed with glitter to achieve a sparkle effect so as to add some pops of brightness to the otherwise all-black decor scheme.

Keeping on theme, the charger plates at each table setting featured the design of a moon.

To mimic the zero-gravity effect of dining on the moon, traditional floral centerpieces were eschewed in favor of levitating displays. That included Omega watches that appeared to float in air, oscillating on "moon rocks" under glass domes .

The M.C. of the night, Lily Koppel, author of The Astronaut Wives Club, welcomed Omega ambassador George Clooney to the stage, calling him the  “man on the moon.” The actor, who emerged from a cloud of white smoke and waxed poetic on the Apollo 13 mission, shared the stage with Omega president Stephen Urquhart and astronauts Gene Cernan, Captain Jim Lovell, and General Thomas Stafford.

Adding to the dinner's outer-space ambience was a massive video screen that showed planets moving across the sky, a space station floating by, meteor showers, and an astronaut drifting in space a la Clooney's film Gravity.

A Fare Extraordinaire provided the dinner, cocktails, and hors d'oeuvres, all of which featured a space-age theme, including the Tang-and-grapefruit-juice-infused vodka cocktail served in a Space Ration Hydropack.

The "On the Moon" dinner was prepared by Houston-based A Fare Extraordinaire under the eye of French chef Valentin Neraudeau, flown in from Paris for the occasion. The first meat course consisted of fresh king crab and Granny Smith green apple with thyme crisp, olive oil madeleine, carrot and cumin foam, and an extra virgin olive oil vinaigrette. Also on the menu was filet of veal with eggplant caviar and caramelized basil-infused jus, and dessert of white chocolate demi spheres with mixed berries.

London-based mixologist Justin Darnes prepared four specialty beverages, and the presentation of each was a twist on the night's space-age theme. For instance, the gin and Williams Pear cocktail was topped with a salted and spiced watermelon foam. Other libations included calvados, kirsh, and raspberry coulis, and, of course, a Clooney-branded Casamigos tequila old fashioned.

For a touch of whimsy, male staffers wore glowing ties, making them easy to spot. The visual also added to the night's otherworldly aesthetic.

The cocktail reception returned to the Weston Family Innovation Centre this year after taking over the Great Hall last year. Retro ball chairs, a circular lounge, and a hanging globe added to the "Fly Me to the Moon" theme.

Motorized solar systems provided a centrepiece for the high-top cocktail tables.

The all-white lounge furniture included rocket ship-inspired ottomans.

Screens surrounding the reception area displayed a loop of sponsor logos and event information.

LG reps took 3-D photos of guests, and the photos flashed onto LG 3-D televisions.

New sponsor Google created a Google Earth activation. Guests zoomed in and out of cities, shown on a series of screens.

Science Centre staffers in lab coats circulated the event with small science experiments for guests to explore, like the effect of polarized lenses.

Dinner was served in the Exhibition Hall of the Ontario Science Centre, where planets hung overhead and a wall of LED lights mimicked a starry sky. The first annual Innovator's Awards were presented on stage.

Retro rocket ships acted as centrepieces in the dining room. Red and orange flowers created a "flame" at the base, which flashed.

The event's collateral materials, including the night's program, matched the retro motif.

Marigolds and Onions created a menu that matched the space-aged theme. LED lights flashed from under a Parmesan nest for the first course, a "Rocket Salad" served with dehydrated cranberries.

Event production and design for a jubilee for the OMEGA dark side of the moon watch

Spotlights shone on a space suit at the entrance to the Fermenting Cellar.

The Beauty Lab took on a science lab feel with mini pylons, dry ice, and volunteers dressed in paint-splashed aprons.

New York's Rumsey Playfield was the backdrop for the 2009 installment of the Central Park Conservancy's Halloween Ball. Large disco balls set atop urns reflected hundreds of spots of light onto the tent ceiling. The starry-night look was reinforced by projections of lightning bolts.

For Fox's premiere of its new show Cosmos, the network's creative services team produced an event in a transformed parking lot in Los Angeles's Griffith Park. In a Classic tent set as a screening room for the show's first episode, Kinetic Lighting created a cosmos-like look with full LED star draping. A Q&A session with the big-name folks behind the show, including Neil deGrasse Tyson and Seth MacFarlane, followed the screening.

After the California Science Center scored one of NASA's coveted orbiters, the museum made the Endeavour the centerpiece of its Discovery Ball last year. The event, which took place under the wings of the retired space shuttle, also displayed projections designed to transport guests into space.

Centerpieces on some dining tables at the Science Center's ball looked like mini solar systems in glass bowls.

The 1960s, the height of America's fascination with space travel, inspired the cocktail reception at the California Science Center ball.

In 2012, Toronto's Ontario Science Centre hosted its fund-raiser, the LG Innovators' Ball. 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. New sponsor Google created a Google Earth activation, where guests zoomed in and out of cities, shown on a series of screens.

The all-white lounge furniture included rocket-ship-inspired ottomans at the Innovators' Ball.

At the LG Innovators' Ball, motorized solar systems served as centerpieces for the high-top cocktail tables.

At a 2011 launch party for the book Sex on the Moon in Boston, space-suit-clad servers circulated with food. Held at the W Boston and co-hosted by Doubleday, the soiree took on an outer-space theme that echoed the book's subject—the true story of a NASA scientist, Thad Roberts, who served jail time for stealing moon rocks.

At the Sex on the Moon book party, the "Cosmo-naut" cocktail was alcohol-injected gelatin floating in a liquid chaser.

The opening gala for the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011, held at the Liberty Grand, took its space-age theme from the festival's opening film, From the Sky Down, a documentary about U2. Band members Bono and the Edge were among the attendees at the event, where audiovisual and lighting components served as decor focal points, thanks to a collaborative effort from Westbury National Show Systems and ESG Show Services. On TV screens, a looped video depicted surreal images of things like a mirror ball, the galaxy, and static.

A Star Trek-theme vintner dinner, part of the 13th annual Naples Winter Wine Festival last year, turned the living room of a private Florida home into the Starship Enterprise Control Room.

The celestial look for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences' Emmy Governors Ball in 2010 borrowed from the night sky. Starry decor transformed the West Hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center for about 3,600 guests. Sequoia Productions, headed by Cheryl Cecchetto, produced the ball, where astrological signs inspired some of the decor elements.

At T-Mobile's “Tone-Def After-Party” during Coachella in 2009, Polite in Public set up a space theme—props included—at its photo station.

In 2006, the National Geographic Channel presented a crowd of 400 media buyers a space-theme event in New York to promote the channel's space-related programming. A lunar rover and a life-size astronaut served as the focal points inside the venue.

Produced by Empire Entertainment, the National Geographic Channel's 2006 upfront also had an orbitron similar to the ones used in the Russian space program, which spun guests around to produce the same dizzying zero-gravity effect. (The activity was noticeably less crowded as the night wore on and more cocktails were consumed).

Sequoia Productions produced and designed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Governors Ball after this year's Academy Awards. The event drew inspiration from nature, interpreting the theme into a glamorous look that included massive vertical garden walls from Mark's Garden and a starry ceiling designed by Larry Oberman in association with ELS.