Transforming a wedding venue into a party venue
How do you transform a wedding venue into a party venue? In this blog, we discuss how to style a beautiful Barn venue for a very special party.
Farbridge, near Chichester, is a beautiful setting for a wedding, hosting them throughout the year. This former dairy nestles in the rolling countryside of the South Downs National Park, a quiet oasis of natural beauty.
Photos below: Promise Photography
1. The perfect backdrop
The Barns offer a light, warm and airy atmosphere.
The Lavant Barn seats up to 150 for dining and boasts a gorgeous neutral colour palette. This offers the perfect backdrop for clients to add their own special touches.
We work regularly with Farbridge’s wedding clients to dress the venue, through our venue styling company Stressfreehire.com.
Clearly, our clients have chosen Farbridge because they have fallen in love with it. And styling the venue draws on every aspect they love about the space.
We use venue styling to dress the rooms but also to highlight specific features, adapt areas to make them better suit their individual requirements and inject their own personality into their event.
Photo below: Charleigh Victoria Photography
2. Dressing a wedding venue
Weddings vary tremendously in style and substance, but they all share a common theme. They all bring together friends and family to celebrate a life event.
Weddings often benefit from focal arrangements to dress the ceremony area, perhaps with a carpet runner and lanterns or flowers to line the aisle.
This sets the scene for the celebrations to come, draws the eye towards the couple and provides a pretty backdrop for those important photos.
Photo: Helen Cawte Photography
3. The room layout can define the décor
In the dining space, the décor you choose will depend upon the room layout.
Weddings generally feature a seated meal, with round or banquet-style tables being the most popular.
For smaller celebrations, draping can work beautifully to segregate the Barn into two distinct areas. We often use drapes to frame the view down the length of the Barn and make the space appear less imposing. Drapes can also be closed when guests first arrive, providing the “wow” factor when they catch their first glimpse of the dining area.
Beam decorations are very popular, highlighting one of the main features of the space. We use lighting, draping, foliage and florals as beam decorations, either covering the whole area or providing impact in the form of a set piece. This may mirror the shape of the tables and can also be used to make a feature of the “top” table.
Photos: James White Photography
4. Parties may be more formal or informal in style
Parties and other celebrations follow a similar format, but clearly don’t generally include a ceremony! They may also be more formal or informal in their style.
With such a large space, Farbridge lends itself perfectly to a stand-up reception, with canapes, bowl food or serving stations.
But it is a grand space and works equally well as a setting for a formal dinner.
With options for private hire for guest numbers from 22 to 150, there are countless ways in which the venue may be used and styled.
Photo: Micaela Cianci Photography
5. A very special birthday celebration
We dressed Farbridge earlier this month for a very special birthday celebration, transforming a wedding venue into a party venue.
The brief was for an intimate dinner party for close family and friends. As a male 60th birthday celebration, we wanted to transform the venue in a way that looked sophisticated and elegant. But it also had to be markedly different from the weddings we usually dress.
We had 36 guests attending, so we opted for one long dining table. We used 3′ wide tables to provide sufficient space for tableware and decorations, but which would be narrow enough to enable conversation to flow.
Photos: Promise Photography
Designing something different
The length of the table enabled us to segregate the Barn into two, thus defining separate drinks and dining areas.
Rather than use a white or ivory drape, which is most popular for weddings, we wanted something different. So we opted for a purple colour theme because we already had the drapes in stock. The bold colour really switched up the look of the Barn and set the colour palette for the party as a whole.
Benefits of using draping
We also used another drape at the end of the Barn to reduce the length of the dining area.
A starcloth drape positioned centrally, rather than the full width of the room, allowed staff access on either side. This also served to provide a striking backdrop as well as making the table appear longer.
The adjacent Meadow Barn, which has beautiful decorative doors, is normally used for wedding ceremonies and evening dancing.
This was repurposed for the party as a green room for crew. We used a blackout drape to neutralise the space and block out any light. With a simple central opening this also made an easy entry/exit system for the crew to join the party as and when required.
Choosing a colour scheme
We carried the purple colour theme through to the table linen. This was then paired with stone linen for the bar area to complement the Barn’s own limewash chairs and soft furnishings.
As the party was taking place in October, we injected a highlight colour of burnt orange for an autumnal hue. Using a print in the party colours painted by Doug’s sister, botanical artist Billy Showell, provided the finishing touch to the tables. The print was used to create personalised menu booklets as well as featuring on the table plan and in the invitations.
Keeping it simple
Overall, the décor used was very simple.
We injected colour purely through the draping, table linen and table stationery.
No overhead installations were used and a lovely, warm ambience was created using lighting. This comprised the venue’s own uplighters together with the light emitted from the starcloth backdrop.
Table and room decoration was provided purely in the form of candles. Storm lantern clusters and tealight holders dressed the tables and the flickering candlelight was safely enclosed in containers. The clear glass of the storm lanterns complemented the glassware on the tables, with both reflecting the candlelight to create a beautiful effect.
Additional lanterns lined the walls, whilst battery candle clusters dressed the sills and floor-standing carousel candelabra flanked the dining table.
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