Venue: Bearpath Golf & County Club
Attendees: 240 Vikings players and staff members, and their families
Decor: Festivities
Entertainment: David Harris, FunKey Brothers
Audio-visual and lighting: Bearpath Golf & County Club
Catering: Bearpath Golf & County Club
Photographer: Bellagala
Event planner: Deb Jones, Minnesota Vikings; Patty Flemming, Festivities


The popularity of pirates, fueled by the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, made it a good theme choice for the Minnesota Vikings football team’s annual holiday celebration. Charged with creating a Caribbean pirate adventure for employees, players, and their families, Festivities, Inc., a Buffalo-based event rental, decor, and event-planning company, transformed the Bearpath Golf & Country Club into a sea-worthy experience.

As guests arrived, they were greeted by a costumed pirate who urged them to sign the ship’s registry (or guestbook), and the kids were given maps for a treasure hunt that took place throughout the evening in various rooms. The guestbook was later turned into a scrapbook keepsake that was given to the team as a memento of the evening.

Other giveaways will keep the event fresh in guests’ minds. Families could have their photo taken at Santa’s Pine Island, a room that was decorated with tropical Norfolk Pines and featured Santa in a purple suit. The photographs were framed for guests to take with them at the end of the night. Kids could have a custom Vikings ornament painted with their name.

In a lounge area called the Crow’s Nest, steel drum and guitar music played. Lanterns with sand and shells in them sat on cocktail tables covered in fishnet. Booths and tables were covered with black-on-black striped tablecloths.

“In the décor, we tried to do a lot of unusual little things. We feel like the details keep people interested,” says Patty Flemming, co-owner of Festivities and concept designer for the event. The Festivities team created a weathered, sand-blown atmosphere with treasure map–themed table runners, hurricane lanterns, candles, and black spandex chair covers with rope accents.

Guests were served appetizers, including grilled shrimp, crab bruschetta, brown sugar and bacon-wrapped apple slices, herb-crusted walleye cheeks with Cajun tartar sauce, corn muffins with chicken-chutney salad, and imported cheeses.

Festivities decorated the stairway leading to the grand ballroom with arrangements that included orchids and ostrich feathers because “we didn’t want there to be a disruption in the theme,” Flemming says. One Festivities employee previously worked on ships, and so he used his experience to lend the stairway a nautical feel by wrapping the banister with ropes tied in intricate knots.

In the galley room, kids could drop in and watch a pirate-themed movie, such as Dora the Explorer, Pirate Adventure, and have popcorn from a popcorn machine and boxes of movie-style candy.

The grand ballroom—or “pirate’s pillage” as it was called that evening—featured an exotic feast for adults with over-the-top pirate plunder décor. “One of the requirements that the Vikings had was for color: About 25 percent of the decor in the room had to be purple,” Flemming says.

Festivities made custom brocade black linens with a satin border over purple fabric especially for the event. The linens matched the black spandex chair covers, which were cinched with jeweled beads at the back of the chair. The 32-inch pilsner glass centerpieces were filled with jewels and coins.

Three different buffet stations, each with a different color palette, were the center of attention. “As people went through the buffet line, there were treasures hidden all over. It was just fabric upon fabric and coins and swords and goblets—all this pillage—and coins spilling out of everything,” Flemming says.

The buffets featured chef-carved brisket and turkey, passion fruit–mango glazed halibut, spinach-mandarin and Caesar salads, a mashed potato martini bar, grilled vegetables, and for dessert, a chocolate fountain and dessert miniatures.

Entertainment in the ballroom included a solo pianist who played as the event began, and roaming musician David Harris playing the violin. The FunKey Brothers dueling pianos capped off the evening with a fast-paced set.

A 40-foot hexagon-frame tent was set up adjacent to the ballroom on the patio for the kids dining area, and was draped with fabric and lights, carpeted, and heated to create a tropical “lost lagoon” area. Kids ate chicken tenders, creamy tropical fruit salad, miniature rolls, sliced turkey, and juice boxes. Each child had a three-cornered pirate hat at their place setting that hid some pirate “booty”: pirate-themed playing cards, kaleidoscopes, and candy.

Accommodating people of different ages can be a challenge at events, but Festivities made sure the kids didn’t miss out on anything. “At the children’s buffet station, we actually had a short section of staging in between two long buffet tables because we knew they weren’t tall enough to see all these things, so we also lowered their display so they could look into it,” Flemming says. This section of flooring was raised so that kids could better see the buffet display.