Hello friends!  I had the honor of planning and designing the January meeting for the National Association for Catering and Events.  All Saints Chapel in downtown Raleigh hosted the meeting.  What a great venue!  I’ll walk you through the evening…

Attendees entered the main Chapel doors and were directed downstairs for cocktails and appetizers.  The downstairs space can be used in a variety of ways, but we set it up for cocktails and later for dessert.  The room is a blank slate, so I opted to add some vibrant color to the table cloths and flowers to liven up the space.  Another member requested jewel tones for the meeting, so this was the perfect space to incorporate those.

After cocktail hour, guests were invited upstairs for dinner and educational presentation.  I chose to make the beautiful Chapel space rustic elegant.  So fitting for the dark wood decor and surrounding neutral colors.  An elegant burlap tablecloth was topped with dusty blue chargers, ivory napkins, and neutral flower arrangements in weathered slate vases.  I chose a variety of blooms in neutral shades and added some silver brunia to tie in the blue chargers.  We had lots of candles throughout the space, which added a  nice warm feeling to the room.  Great for one of the coldest nights of the year!

I arranged for some beautiful hand painted wooden signs for various spaces around the venue.  A welcome sign that the ladies at All Saints totally fell in love with, a coffee sign, a dessert sign, and the most unpopular of the evening…  The Unplugged Room sign.  LOL

The board wanted the topic for the meeting to revolve around going unplugged and suggested guests go unplugged for the event.  We settled on going unplugged for the presentation portion, so made the main Chapel area the Unplugged Room.  But to ask a group of business-people to go unplugged for several hours was touchy.  We nearly had a riot just asking them to go unplugged for dinner!  LOL  I even ordered chocolate iphones as bribes, er, I mean favors, and it didn’t sway them.  Totally understandable, and I hate to admit, but my phone was in my boot the entire time.  😉  (Interesting side note, the chocolates came from a friend of mine in GA.  A couple of years ago, she and a co-worker were on Cupcake Wars and WON!  So I told guests they were eating chocolates made by someone famous!  haha)

It was a great exercise because it really highlighted just how tied to our technology we really are.  I, for one, decided to go offline for at least part of every day.  So I am thankful for the evening for many reasons, and that’s just one.  After dinner, guests went back downstairs for dessert, coffee, and fun in the photobooth.  It was a beautiful night, but words don’t do justice, so please check out the pictures on the gallery or facebook pages!

Many thanks to the wonderful vendors who supported the evening!

Venue:  All Saints Chapel

Catering:  Empire Eats

Rentals:  Party Reflections

DJ and up-lighting:  All Around Raleigh DJ

Photobooth:  Shutterbooth NC

Photography: Casey Rose Photography

Market lights:  Themeworks

Signs:  Homemade Bride

Chocolate iphones:  Sweet Creations by Candi