Logistics

We're hosting a 140 person cocktail hour, ceremony, and reception at my parent's house on July 10. Did your head just explode considering all of the moving parts, issues and things to think about with that? Mine did last Saturday.

And then I started spreadsheeting. And I'm all over it.

The first question is where the eff do 140 people fit? Let's go over the "It's a beautiful sunshine-y day" plan first, then I'll digress into rain plans in another post.

First, refresh your memory of my parent's place:

I've already gone into detail about how the landscaping is different. And that we painted last summer. But those are the fluffy things we'll talk about later. Let's talk layouts:

The above image is not to scale; I'll get to a scaled image shortly. But looking at that, you'll notice that there isn't really one huge big space to put a tent. Well friends, you take what you can get. Here's the plan:

I'm paying extra for the 20 X 50' tent to be set up on Wednesday. The peace of mind is worth it, and if it's raining, the tent would give the ground underneath three days to dry out. The tent will go across the upper terrace, and nearly touch the front of the house. (these images are to scale)

The upper terrace currently looks like this:

The tent is a freestanding tent, which will have to be strategically staked. I'm sure we can MacGuyver some stakeing, as there won't be much space outside of the tent for staking. The tent will generally look like this:

The tent provides 1,000 square feet of dry area. We will, of course, be a bit hampered by the stairs down to the lower terrace, deck railing, and flower beds. But, generally, we can get seating for about 64 people under the tent, and an additional 16 on the terrace outside of the tent, for 80 seats on the upper terrace:

The blue in the area above is circulation space around tables, yellow the tables, and red circles are guests. The rentals place provided this nice little formula for how much space is needed for tables, chairs and circulation space:

ASIDE FROM MAIN TRAFFIC AISLES, ALLOW 4½’ BETWEEN ROUND TABLES FOR CHAIR AND SERVICE SPACE AND 5’ BETWEEN OBLONG TABLES WHERE SEATING IS BACK TO BACK. THIS PERMITS 24” SERVICE SPACE BEHIND 18” CHAIR DEPTH.

We also have the upper deck of the house and the deck of the shack. They currently look like this:

We can accomdate another 44 guests with the following plan:

Okaaayyyy... that leaves a dance floor, and bar and catering stations to take care of. We'll put two bar stations up (beer and wine only). One under the deck:

And another between the house and the shack:

The dance floor will come in 4' X 4' panels. The good weather plan is to set up the dancefloor in the driveway area, which is flatter than it looks in this picture:

 

That leaves only a catering area to be determined. We might set them up in the kitchen of the shack. Or, they could pull their van into the driveway and set up catering tables behind the dancefloor. It'll be their preferance and depend on the weather. We'll also bring in a porta potty or two to keep my parent's sewer/ septic from overflowing.

Stay tuned for the general lighting plan (again, it's not going to rain), as well as the rain plan "Sprinkle" and rain plan "Monsoon".

(yes, I really did name the rain plans differently).