Turning the Tables

Most of Jacobs’ clients are looking for a clean, cutting-edge table design that is upscale and sophisticated. “If you go from a round table to a square table, or a round table to a larger rectangular table, you are creating a whole different perspective when people walk in,” she says. Square-sided tables create a look that’s different from the standard: a room full of eight-person round tables.

Becky Harris, national account executive at Event Lab, an event design and management company in Minneapolis, says that clients are asking for visually interesting table arrangements. At an event for Xcel Energy, Event Lab arranged rectangle tables into a large X shape that echoed the company logo.

Saturated color is a great way to dress up a tabletop. At a fundraiser for the Children’s Cancer Research Fund at The Depot in Minneapolis, Harris wanted to create a bright and cheery feel. “By creating an environment that is lively, you make people feel awake and feel like buying,” she says. Harris achieved the look with a pink base table linen and an orange and bright pink overlay with tassels and embedded jewels.

Turquoise is also hot right now. For the reopening of the new Minnesota Public Radio headquarters in downtown St. Paul, Shereé Bochenek, design consultant, and Andrea Bach, event specialist at Après Party and Tent Rental in Edina, designed the tables for a dinner for 400 guests. Turquoise satin linens covered with a sheer blue-leaf overlay and glass trumpet vases filled with calla lilies and twigs complemented the cool, blue lighting. Spotlighting the tabletops was key to the design; it provided the main source of light and a theatrical look. Round tables gave attendees sight lines to one or more of the stages where musicians played throughout dinner.

The middle of a table can sometimes pose problems for guests—it can be difficult to talk or pass items over and around big centerpieces. Centerpieces should be low or high so that sight lines to the stage or speaker aren’t blocked. Harris suggests sitting at a table, putting your elbow on the table with your forearm pointing up, and making a fist. Centerpieces should not be much higher than the fist. (Alternately, for a tall centerpiece, the bulk of the centerpiece should be well above the fist.)

For many events, flowers are still the centerpieces of choice, but the centerpieces in general have gone in a new direction.  For the Children’s Cancer event, Harris chose to showcase exotic flowers, such as heliconia, papyrus, and beehive ginger. By artfully displaying each stem, Harris was able to put an emphasis on the uniqueness of each flower. “It was more like a study of a pretty flower, rather than your typical bunch of blossoms,” Harris says. It’s also a cost-saving measure since large flower arrangements can be pricey.

Bochenek agrees that a simple floral arrangement can be striking. “Just placing large stalk floral, such as birds of paradise or calla lilies in a vase, makes for a simple, yet impressive centerpiece,” she says. Glass trumpet vases and cylinders are popular right now because they look simple and sophisticated, and guests can easily see around them.