Behind every successful event, there's a committed team. Executing a large-scale event requires a lot of planning, organizing, and collaboration. Our first 3,200 guest count event took a whole nine months to prepare for. We explored different concepts and design ideas and collaborated with our vendors to ensure the best possible experience. Here's how we put together our Roaring through the Decades themed event from 2018 and what we learned from it.
CHOOSING THE VENUE
The most important piece to any successful event is the venue. Our team worked hard to find a venue that could hold 3,200 guests, 95 staff members, and 16 vendors. After sourcing The Port Pavilion on Broadway, our team, along with our client and vendors, did multiple walk-throughs to discuss the logistics.
DESIGNING THE CONCEPT
To create the experience of “Rolling Through the Decades” and ensure the authenticity of each era, our Chief Creative Officer Jason researched each decade and gathered all the materials that we would need to pull off this major event. Before packing up the decor, Jason put together a mock set-up for the team to review and then took pictures of each set-up. On the day of the event, pictures of the mock set-ups were distributed to our Event Captains.
STORING & PACKING OUT
Organize, organize, organize! There is nothing worse than arriving on-site to find out you’re missing something for your event. To prevent this from happening, we color tagged all our equipment and supplies and neatly stored away everything in our separate storage containers.
Two days before the major event, the team strategically packed and loaded the trucks.
LOGISTICS
Because The Port Pavilion has only one way to drive in or out of the dock, it was imperative that each vendor involved understood the production schedule. To maximize the amount of time we had to pull off this event, we collaborated with each vendor to determine how much time they would need to set up. Based on the amount of time that each vendor provided, we scheduled each vendor with their specific arrival times.
Once trucks arrived on-site, our staff helped to quickly unpack the trucks and began setting up the empty cruise ship terminal to transport guests back through time.
THE KITCHEN
A common off-premise catering challenge we face is how to bring a fully functioning kitchen into an event space with no kitchen or prep area on site. More often than not, we set up in a small space outside next to the building.
Fortunately, with heated servers, hot boxes and griddles, our kitchen team was able to provide quality food to the large crowd.
Occasionally, our kitchen team has to get creative with the food preparations. In this instance, our kitchen staff used a kiddie pool to mix the Mexican Chopped Salad.
WRAPPING IT UP
That’s it! When the event is done we wrap it up…and rest for the next few days.
CREATIVE PARTNERS
Venue: Port Pavilion on Broadway Pier
@broadwaypier
Catering & Planning: Feast on This Culinary & Event Production
@feastonthiscatering
Churros: El Tigre Churro
@churroseltigre
Espresso Bar: Eurobar
@eurobarespresso
Photography: The Copper Collective
@copper.collective_
Event Rentals: Bright Event Rentals
@brighteventrentals
Lighting/AVS: Velocity
@velocityavs
Communication Devices: Day Wireless Systems
@daywirelesssystems
Photobus: Pacific Coast Photobus
@pacificcoast_photobus
Jazz Singer: Whitney Shay
@whitneyshaysings
Live Action Painter: Stephen Fishwick
@stephenfishwick
Magicians: Joe Mystic
@joe.mystic
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