Event Ideas We Love!

Waiters didn’t have to remember what they were serving (and guests didn’t have to ask) when now-defunct Match Catering printed T-shirts with food descriptions for a 2004 BizBash event.

XA, the Experiential Agency, used long grosgrain ribbons to simply and effectively divide a large space at a 2006 Tag Heuer event.

To create a modern, all-white look for a 2006 dinner at Manhattan’s Pier 60, Empire Force Events hid the venue’s colorful, patterned carpet with a layer of large, white confetti.

Digital photo booth projections, like this one from Mark van S. at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 2006 benefit, have become an event staple for mixing interactive entertainment and decor.

At the opening party for the Felissimo Design House in New York in 2001, guests never had to wait for a waiter to come by with food. They could pick hors d’oeuvres right from the wall of an installation by French artist Dorothee Selz.

At a 2006 Swarovski shoe launch in New York, designer Todd Shearer put shoes on mannequins as well as live models whose sudden movements surprised guests.

For the opening of the Hearst Tower in 2006, Van Wyck & Van Wyck brought in aerialists to perform 100 feet above the crowd, a dramatic twist on the traditional ribbon cutting.

The Dia Art Foundation’s gala in 2006 had glowing circular tables.

The American Heart Association’s 2006 Rhapsody in Red event had a dramatic event entryway designed by Matthew David Events: a model wore a silk organza dress with a 30-foot-long skirt that draped over the New York Public Library’s entrance.

At the 2006 opening of Parasuco’s flagship store, six dancers surprised guests by emerging from within a 14-foot-tall skirt for a live performance.

For a 2006 Motorola event, KSE Productions suspended a metal platform from the ceiling as an unconventional lectern and used stretch-fabric video screens as a backdrop.

For a private dinner in 2006, JMVisuals created an unexpected overhead lighting trick: rows of frosted votives suspended from the ceiling on square Lucite tiles.

To celebrate the renovation of Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in 2007, Roy Braeger designed a vertical stage that tied into the event’s construction-themed decor and gave guests an unobstructed view of the musicians.

At the 2008 Robin Hood Foundation gala, XO laptops on each dinner table displayed menus, statistics about the organization’s work, and images of flowers, and then were donated to city schoolchildren after the event.

The cocktail napkins for the 2002 opening of Prada’s store in SoHo in New York were useful in two ways, with an itinerary and maps showing the locations for the night’s multiple parties.

In what Target called a “vertical fashion show,” acrobats danced, posed, and catapulted down runways on the side of 620 Fifth Avenue, one of the buildings that flanks the ice rink at Rockefeller Center, in 2005.