Social Event Behind the Scenes | Michigan Event Planner and Floral Design Team

We take an in-depth, behind the scenes look at what it takes to build out a two-day social event for over 1,000 attendees! Check out Friday’s formal sit-down dinner here and Saturday’s extravaganza here.

Friday, August 4 (7 days until first event day)

A truckload of flowers was delivered and 6 AGE team members began processing over 9,320 stems. Our cooler and design room was packed to the brim with the most beautiful colors. This flower count only included the flowers that came from our wholesaler and none of the local blooms that came the following week.

Monday, August 7th (4 days until event day)

9 AGE Team members continued to process even MORE beautiful blooms, many of them coming from our friends over at Michigan Flower Barn. Towards the afternoon, design day one began!

Enjoy this blurry iPhone shot of what our lunch table looked like this week! So many wonderful conversations with the best in the biz!

Tuesday, August 8th (3 days until event day)

Everyone dove right into Friday’s bold, monochromatic red design first. Buckets were cleared from the cooler as the team blasted through the red florals for Friday in no time.

Then the color started to slowly appear for Saturday’s Design! In terms of recipes, we made sure we had more than enough flowers ordered by creating specific recipes for each line item on the design proposal. Other than making sure that we actually ordered enough blooms, the intention was never for our freelancers to follow the recipes but to get creative with whatever they could creatively dream up in the vessels we had previously prepped.

We are lucky to have a big deck outside to enjoy lunches!

Wednesday, August 9th (2 days until event day)

Lynette’s day was full of last-minute logistic emails and phone calls wrapping up vendor questions. While 10 other AGE team members were in a sea of blooms in our design space. These talented ladies designed over 75 centerpieces and 4 installations for Friday’s event alone.

Saturday’s event included over 100 centerpieces and 7 very large scale installations. Fun Fact: No two centerpieces were alike! We gave our talented ladies full design freedom because we wanted everything to feel very eclectic and mismatched. It was a sight to behold and so amazing to see the results of what they wanted to create each day!

Thursday, August 10th (1 day until event day) – Part 1

Onsite production for the Saturday event at The Breslin Center begins! Normally, this space is utilized for the Michigan State Basketball Teams (Go Green!). We began our transformation by having carpet laid, a 40’x40′ main stage, two 16×12 side stages, and an 8×16 front-of-the-house stage. Battens and trusses were lowered to install the disco balls, while pipe and drape was installed to cover the fold-out bleachers and the lower bowl. Once these basics were done by the Breslin Team, we were ready for the vendor team’s arrival.

The day began by assisting 8 vendor teams with their piece of the puzzle. We would greet them as they arrived, share updated details as needed, and be present for questions and design decisions. This was a 15-hour production day!

The build-out started to take shape!

The custom-wrapped dance floor install began! We wanted something bold as this was a focal point of the entire space. This was the one item in 3 years of planning that didn’t change in vision. We found a rug on Google in different colors, and said, what if this was a dance floor design, but in colors to match the event? From there we hand drew what we wanted and passed it along to be fabricated. We knew it was going to be a packed dance floor once the entertainment began.

Thursday, August 10th (1 day until event day) – Part 2

Back at the studio, 10 AGE team members were hard a work finishing up the 40-foot bold and beautiful stage piece. Everyone was assigned a color and they got to work spending the most time on the blending portions of the design. It was fun to watch everyone interact and gameplan with one another at how to achieve the show stopping finished product.

Our floral freelancers are just the coolest! Hands down.

This was another 15-hour production day!

Friday, August 11 (Event day one!)

Lynette started the morning at 8:30 at The Kellogg Event Center to get the team going on production for event one later that evening. After that, she went back to The Breslin Center for another 4 hours to continue monitoring the progress. Disco balls were hung, linens we laid and we began to adjust the spacing of tables and soft seating. The production team began their day with an 8:00 am load-in to begin to build out the stage sound, lighting, and hospitality suites for the entertainment.

Meanwhile, 8 other AGE team members loaded up the vans and headed over to Kellogg Center to begin floral and decor production for Friday’s event. 42 guest tables, a dance floor, lots of soft seating, and beautiful touches filled the Big Ten Rooms. Our team managed 9 vendors during this setup. (and remember, there were different vendors at the other venue finishing their production!)

This event began at 5:00 pm and ended at 11:00 pm. Another 16-hour day for our team!

Saturday, August 12th (Event day two!)

The day began at 9:00 with a van load-in from the AGE Studio. We headed over to the Breslin Center to begin the floral drop! Our team was made up of 12 AGE team members. They set and fluffed pillows, placed votives, and made a few fun impromptu floral installations happen like these banquette couch florals were the best surprise! Today was a whirlwind 16-hour production day.

Core memories include meeting The Temptations and Three Dog Night and getting to enjoy their concert with a few team members.

Shoutout to the Michigan State Hockey Team for throwing on some OG skates and passing out appetizers to our guests!

If you were keeping track, this 8-day production included a total of 80 hours for the week JUST from our team. Also, if wanted a more accurate amount of total labor hours, we could add up all the hours of every person who worked for our team that week. Now THAT would be a lot, in the hundreds nearing a thousand! That also doesn’t include the 3+ years it took Emily and Lynette to plan and design these events! IT WAS A FEAT!

We are so incredibly proud of these events and the amazing weekend of events the attendees had. We will forever be grateful to our clients for allowing our creative minds to run wild and give them an unforgettable evening. Thank you!!