Last Thursday marked a huge milestone for our company- we celebrated 15 years in the business, showcased our new office and warehouse, launched a new website and above all, threw a big party to celebrate. This “party” has been an item on the Things To Do list for several years. But as you can imagine, with a company that does roughly 450 events a year, our clients celebrations always come before ours.

With this celebration, we knew we had to do things a little differently. And partially for selfish reasons of wanting to enjoy ourselves instead of working, we took creative approaches to familiar aspects of parties that we highly suggest you emulate. Here are the highlights:

• Instead of hiring a photographer, we used our new Padzilla to allow any and
  every guest to pose for a #selfie. What could be better than the touch of a button and a 3-second countdown to get picture perfect?!
• One of the first items Ron mentioned was a “veggie tray”, a term synonymous with parties since any of us can remember. But as a creative company, we couldn’t provide a regular tray of crudites. Instead, we implemented the interactive-help-yourself-veggie-wall. Suspended from a truss systems, and backlit, cups were preset with a variety of vegetables for guests to select then help themselves to hanging buckets of dill dip and flavored hummus’.
• The Bar was also an area that we didn’t want to staff but wanted to provide a simple, yet creative approach to quench the thirst of visitors. Taking from trends on the coasts, a hand-animated video taught guests to DIY their cocktail, selecting from two liquors and two mixers to create their own concoction. The sparkling mint ginger lemonade was a big hit, with and without booze.

Catering food can sometimes add even more work for the host, between renting equipment and tables to providing dining ware. Luckily, food trucks are gaining popularity locally and our parking lot was the perfect staging location. Just before doors opened, the trucks arrived, filled our lot and prepped their food. Guests helped themselves to tacos, BBQ Sundaes, and a variety of desserts they were able to walk onto the truck to select, including ice cream doughnut sandwiches, s’mores on a stick and chocolate dipped Oreos.

Among these elements, guests also enjoyed live music with a custom LED column backdrop, lounges set against walls of projected music videos, and an illuminated centerpiece of calla lilies both suspended and set on a table of 16. But the best part, is that we were joined by clients, friends and family from the past fifteen years to help us celebrate.