A Winter Wonderland

A little magic, creativity, smoke and mirrors, ……. and a space is transformed for a special night for a few privileged guests. After a 10 hour setup, the room was ready for the guests to flood the room and celebrate! At about 3AM, the rig was down, the decor loaded out, and the ballroom was clear and reset to normal. Just another Saturday in the event world.

There is nothing worse about a setup like this than the schedule. The amount of coordination and cooperation that must take place for a one day load-in is insane. This was a small one, and there were still about 4 trucks, several vendors, and about 30 crew not counting the wait staff! Even though I have been doing this for about 25 years, I still get that feeling early in the day that we are never gonna be ready or that my design is going to fail. Its a stupid and unreasonable feeling, I know, but I think in some warped way that it keeps me on my toes. You see, failure is not really an option with these events. Come hell or high water..these guests are walking in on time….whether you are ready or not! No excuses, it has to be ready, nuff said!

To see these incredible environments have to come down…never to be seen again….is difficult for some to comprehend. I have often laughed at seeing the expression of a party goer returning to the war torn looking event space to recover a purse or set of keys about an hour into the strike. Trust me, its not a pretty sight at 2AM! I guess that’s why I have always liked to capture our events with the camera. Its nice to be reminded of what we work so hard to create!