Making a Spectacle

Show Stoppers

There are always ideas to glean from movies and other popular culture. Event Lab, for example, is creating an event around a theme of Cocoanut Grove, the Los Angeles nightclub that Howard Hughes frequented. Event Lab has hired an aerialist to swing back and forth over the dance floor. “The client wanted something that’s never been done before,” Harris says. “And that has never been done here.”

Tropical themes are always popular in this cold climate. For an event at Treasure Island Resort & Casino in Red Wing, Kraemer’s Catering was hired to create a tropical display in a room the size of a football field. The staff employed a separate theme for each half of the room. In the “jungle” half, Kraemer’s team covered the ceiling in camouflage and hung ferns and ivy from it. A 14-foot-tall archway made to look like lava rock greeted guests, accompanied by 10-foot-tall erupting volcanoes and banyan trees specially made for the event. In the “beach” half of the room, the ceiling was lit in orange to look like the sun. The caterer used scaffolding to create a 14-foot-tall waterfall and built a boat and dock that were used as a seafood buffet.

The Design Group recently planned a fundraiser around the theme “Mission: Possible.” Staff members transformed a space at the Hyatt Regency in Minneapolis with a series of eye-popping elements, including a camera shutter as an entrance arch, tuxedo-styled chair backs, tall interior-lit columns topped with large ostrich feather plumes, and James Bond–style silhouettes in the silent-auction area.

And, of course, there was the event with that horse—complete with two handlers and an experienced child rider in appropriate attire—for a Kentucky Derby–themed children’s hospital gala. “The horse with a child rider walking through the ballroom [full of] dinner tables really started the event,” Jacobs says. “The race was off.”