Making a Spectacle

Another popular element that injects life into an event is the use of beverage fountains or a martini luge track like the one Kraemer brought to the Buck Hill event. While champagne fountains are visually impressive, Stromberg advises against their use, as they tend to “de-bubble” the champagne; she recommends a punch fountain instead. Simple to Grand has also used 4-foot-tall fountains with cascading molten chocolate. “They’re interactive and really draw people together to talk,” Stromberg says.

When possible, Simple to Grand will bring a chef to its events. “We’ll often add one chef to the table. Whether he’s carving a roast or making some quesadillas on the spot, having a person there interacting . . . brings a little theater to the table,” Stromberg says. “We have also done some dessert bars where a pastry chef . . . torches the tops of crème brûlées, or even makes s’mores for the people there. It’s always fun if there’s some kind of action going on.”

Illuminating Ideas

Video backdrops and creative lighting are two inventive ways to bring visual excitement to your event. The possibilities for video are seemingly endless. Chris Rohde, technical director and lighting manager for Eagan-based Showcore, a staging company, regularly creates realistic, multilayered electronic scenery projected on screens for events. “If you’re doing a big skyscape, you can have one video with a cloud, another layer that’s trees, another layer that’s bushes, and another layer that’s the sun setting over the scene. You can still lay graphics on top of that,” he says.

Urban Communications, a production company based in Plymouth, recently created a backdrop for a South Beach–themed party. “We took a pastel southern beach painting and turned that into a projection,” says Greg Eklund, Urban Communications president. “When people came in, they saw on this massive wall what looked like a colorful South Beach cityscape.”

Spectacular light patterns will also grab people’s attention, Eklund says. “Programmable lighting fixtures that can change colors and different patterns or projections . . . can add movement and excitement,” he says. One of his favorite tools is a hazer, a device that generates a very fine fog in the space so that when the moving lights begin, event attendees can see the beams moving through the air. “It’s a simple thing that can really create an atmosphere,” Eklund says.

Another simple but effective technique employed by Eklund is the use of pin spots, or very tight spotlights. “At one banquet, we hung 80 of them from the ceiling, and we pin-spotted the centerpieces on all the tables,” he says. “They just lit up the centerpieces. It looked very classy.”