Monday, July 6, 2009

Storming the castle



Here...kitty, kitty.

The reason Oscar and I came to Italy was to help his friend Edgar set up a wedding reception here in an a castle in Florence. So, we spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday putting things up (and then tearing them down and packing up the materials to be sent back to LA).



The castle is gorgeous and has all of the decor that you've seen in a thousand movies. Medieval design, lush gardens, stone architecture and statues akimbo.























They even make wine here...wish I could take a couple of these back with me to LA.



So, the past three days have been dedicated to focusing on the party. It's been very busy and we've all been functioning on small doses of sleep, but it was a lot of fun and well worth it in many ways.



We had to unload materials from a huge metal container that was shipped over, then take it to the castle (along with the other three members of our team, plus additional local helpers).



This is the rest of our main group, plus Monica the party planner (who is also the daughter of the Villa owners where we're staying). Monica and her husband, Max (on the right in the photo below), have also served as wonderful guides and hosts while we're staying here (they made both of the delicious meals for us the first two nights and have shuttled us around and given directions, rides and so much more.



They have been great during this very busy weekend.

Decorating a room, to many, sounds like a fairly easy job. It's just a large space, fabric and furniture all thrown together, right? Well, it takes a LOT of hard work by many teams of people to transform a room like this...



Into something festive and unrecognizable as this...





Here is a before picture of one of Edgar's round mirrored tables (with a cool reflection of the castle above), followed by the end result.





It's really amazing how all the materials, planning, design and grueling work all come together in the end. It really makes me appreciate, more than I already did, how many skilled and talented people it takes to put an event together.



Everything worked out very well and the client was happy, which is all that counts. It must have been a very big client because you know who stopped by and sang a couple of songs during the reception?

Sting.

Yes...THE Sting.

Of course, that happened during the only four hours (out of twenty four) that we weren't at the castle. But, Monica got to meet him and said that he was very nice.



Now that work is done, it's time to relax and enjoy the rest of our time here. I spent all day in Florence today...so, that will be showing up on the blog very soon.

It's four a.m. now...must sleep....

3 comments:

Brad said...

For a busman's holiday...not bad, not bad at all! Looking forward to seeing your pics of Florence.

Vampire Hours said...

I finally got another internet connection here in Berlin. So, I'm going to post Florence photos soon. =)

Anonymous said...

Hey Ken,
Amazing photos, amazing trip !! Thanks for sharing with us.
C&G