Science palooza Space

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.

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.

The event took place at Carnegie Library. Atmosphere Lighting designed the lighting for the space. The hexagon-shaped bar was studded with LED lights.

Guests could play the classic video game Space Invaders in a modern format: Quince Imaging projected onto the walls of the venue.

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.

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 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.

Following a video announcement, Axe introduced its campaign spokesperson, astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Aldrin's dramatic entrance was accompanied by fog, a light shift from purple to red, and eight staffers dressed as astronauts descending the hall's staircase.

As part of its public promotional campaign, which included the use of the #InSpace hashtag, Axe sent staffers dressed as astronauts to public areas in New York—including the subway and Madison Square Park. The spacemen also showed up at parties surrounding the Super Bowl February 3 in New Orleans.

Axe turned the Cullman Hall of the Universe into its secret space headquarters for the launch event, placing signage and a moon-landing-inspired photo op area up front. To further play up the space academy concept, the production team created two oversize, illuminated metal detectors, which formed a checkpoint-style entrance to the main space.

Just beyond the checkpoint, an astronaut-shaped ice sculpture stood on a pedestal marked with A.A.S.A.—the Axe Apollo Space Academy—an acronym the brand is using in its campaign.

In contrast to the stark checkpoint, the main space for the event was heavily saturated with bright pink, blue, and purple lighting. The organizers also added modern white furniture to the hall.

Set against the museum's exhibition displays, glowing tables served as displays for the products in the new Axe Apollo line.

Staffers in military flight jumpsuits with the A.A.S.A. branding and backlit bars decorated with images of stars and galaxies advanced the space academy concept.

To further brand the museum hall and reinforce the campaign competition that will send consumers into space, the producers added a scale model of a spaceship amidst the projections, exhibits, and product displays.

The evening's entertainment included a performance by rapper Kendrick Lamar.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Guests could step into the cockpit of a flight simulator from the Traveling Space Museum.

A lunar rover and a life-sized astronaut served as the focal points inside Skylight for the National Geographic Channel's upfront event.

Cocktails, along with a variety of other beverages provided by Abigail Kirsch, were served under hanging comets and a backdrop of projected stars at the Moon-theme bar.

The orbitron gave those with a strong stomach a topsy-turvy ride to reproduce the feeling of space travel.

Guests walked through large spandex arches from the main dining room into the children's corner.