My Try at Event Design

     This past weekend, I was lucky enough to help my roommate and her friends at Mixed Greens Event Design with a wedding they had been planning in Jersey City. I have a very creative mind, so I was excited to have the opportunity to be creative in a different way than I'm used to! Our day started at 9 AM, when we left our apartment to go to the studio in the Brox. We then proceeded to load all of the equipment for the wedding into a van that we rented, including flowers, vases, candles, a huppah (it was a Jewish wedding), and plenty of other objects that we needed. The ride to Jersey City took about a half hour, and once we arrived, we immediately started carrying our supplies inside. The venue was the Liberty House, a restaurant and event space right on the water, overlooking the whole New York City skyline and the Statue of Liberty. The wedding took place on the second floor of the space and was mostly windows, so you were able to look out and see the skyline perfectly.
     It took us about seven hours to fully set up for the wedding. My roommate and her friends had already done all of the necessary planning, so we spent our time cutting and arranging flowers, setting up tables for after the wedding, putting the huppah together, and preparing the aisle for the bride. Even though most of the planning had been done beforehand, I soon realized why we got to the venue so early. As we were setting up, we faced many unpredictable problems that needed solutions so that the wedding could go smoothly. The best example of this was when we discovered moments before the wedding that the floor was too slippery to secure the runner for the aisle! We were slightly panicked because we didn't want to disappoint the bride, so we tried to give her a romantic alternative to a runner. Instead, we chose to put vases with floating candles and flowers all along the aisle. We then scattered white rose petals up and down the aisle to replace the runner. It turned out beautifully, and I actually liked it better than the runner because it was such a creative and unique alternative.
     While the wedding ceremony was happening, we went downstairs to the bar to relax before we had to go back upstairs for the change over. The change over is when the chairs, aisle and huppah from the ceremony are all taken apart and moved for the party. The new space is used for the dinner tables and dance floor. While we were moving everything around, the guests were downstairs at cocktail hour, so we had some time to make everything perfect. Once we put the finishing touches on the centerpieces, we were done! Well, almost. We were very lucky because the Liberty House didn't have an event in the morning, so we didn't have to stick around until the party ended to take everything down (that would have been a very late night!). However, we still had tons of supplies to take back with us. After wrestling with leftover branches and lifting some extremely heavy objects, we were able to drive back to the Bronx where we got to unload everything we had just loaded! It was very tiring, but the experience was worth it. I had a great time, and I loved that I got to help with such an important part of someone's life. Seeing the expression on the bride's face after she saw what we had put together made all of the manual labor worth it! I'm not sure if I could handle event design as a career (have you seen how frail my arms are?!) but it was a great experience. I enjoyed the process of putting together an event and seeing the final product. I'm looking forward to hopefully helping Mixed Greens Event Design out with other events in the future!