This week's roundup includes a corporate bash in Los Angeles with over-the-top Gatsby-style entertainment, lanterns that doubled as escort cards in Scottsdale, Arizona, tacos positioned on an Astroturf playing field in New York, and Mr. Clean's giant Times Square cleanup on New Year's Day.
The Bregenz Festival—recently recommended as an event every planner should attend—draws huge crowds every summer to the shores of Austria’s Lake Constance, where a staggeringly extravagant floating stage set is built to showcase opera performances. The opera festival, founded in 1946, also includes a conventional indoor theater, but each year one well-known opera is staged on a custom-built, high-tech platform, with performers often using the surrounding waters as an extension of the stage.
After loads of confetti poured down on Times Square to usher in 2014, partygoers went to bed—and Mr. Clean went to work. The company teamed up with the Times Square Alliance and the New York City Department of Sanitation on a massive cleanup effort that took place in the wee hours of January 1. The activation saw a 25-person cleaning crew known as the Mr. Clean Team performing synchronized dance numbers as participants helped sweep up the public space.
Engage!13, a luxury-wedding summit, took place at Scottsdale's Montelucia Resort & Spa in December. Playing off the venue's Moroccan-inspired architecture, designers from Gifts for the Good Life crafted birdcage lanterns to use as escort cards.
For CyberCoders, an Irvine-based staffing firm that just sold for $105 million, Kapture Vision produced a Great Gatsby-theme event with some unusual, extravagant entertainment. Held at the Majestic Halls in Los Angeles, the event featured a a tightrope walker hovering over guests at dinner.
Instead of creating a traditional showroom with vignettes of its new products, Crate & Barrel invited members of the press to interact with products at a backyard garden party on a chilly New York evening in November. Take-home gifts included a jar of jalapeño preserves wrapped in a tea towel. Woven into the twine tie was a flash drive.
The Brussels Flower Carpet is a mosaic of 700,000 intricately arranged begonias that comes to life every two years for five days during August in the central square of the European capital city. Meant to incite conversation about nature, cities, and art, the designs have typically incorporated themes from Belgium’s history. The next flower carpet will appear this year.
For a corporate party in Washington, Evoke put its own spin on a speakeasy theme. A deconstructed Caesar salad was served by the glass. The stiff romaine leaves mimicked the look of a flapper's feather headdress. Other bites at the event included wasabi deviled eggs, candied bacon, and a "bees knees" cheese station.
Roving card dealers dressed in flapper costumes presided over games of blackjack and poker using custom chips—actually chocolate coins—with the company logo.
From the book The White Dress in Color: Wedding Inspirations for the Modern Bride, playful escort cards were displayed under a deer head sculpture growing out of a wall of roses.
Food service company Sysco Metro NY served tacos and other hors d’oeuvres from a station covered in Astroturf at Jets & Chefs, a new event during this October’s New York City Wine & Food Festival.
