Last night was by far the most intense wedding experience I have had yet! Salma and Mohamad were married at the Detroit Opera House, which now ranks #1 on my list of favorite venues – not only because it is gorgeous! Dan Brinker, the production manager at the Opera House, is amazing to work with and his staff is equally so. They provided me with a walkie talkie to be able to contact the front of house staff, which proved to be incredibly valuable!
In addition to the on site contact, myself and my two assistants also had radio contact with each other throughout the event. Why would that be necessary, you might ask? Let me give you a run down of things that needed to be coordinated for some visualization:
- The entrance of guests into the stage from the lobby, with simultaneous cuing of the quartet on stage and the Sheik to be ready to go behind the curtain
- The entrance of the bridal families and bride with her father, with simultaneous cuing of the quartet for 3 separate songs and the Sheik to enter the stage once everyone had taken their seats
- Hiding the bride and groom at the end of the ceremony, while moving chairs off stage and cuing the curtain to be raised (which resulted in a well-deserved gasp from the crowd!)
- Assisting lingering guests with place cards in the lobby, a seating chart on stage, and preparing the grand entrance off stage with the bride and groom and Lana belly dancing troupe
- Coordinating the lighting with the entrance, cuing the singer of the band to begin and making sure the caterer was ready for whatever show was coming their way
- Having the Layali sword performers (yes, you read that right!) ready to go immediately following the grand entrance, with a slide show of photos scrolling on a screen in the background
Just a brief pause for a photo of the gorgeous 48 foot sweets table!
- Coordinating the video of the bride and groom to begin at the conclusion of the sword performers, making sure the various performers received a meal between acts, and placing any gifts and cards on the bride’s dressing room
- Dealing with an entire HUGE layer of cake that could not be served since the baker decided throwing it on a flat-bed would be a good idea (there will be a blog post about this later)
- Get the picture? This is only about half way through the evening!
The caterer, Opus One, did a great job serving and clearing food around all the performers, and I heard nothing but amazing things about the food! Because service was a bit delayed (performances tend to make it hard to serve…), Salma and Mohamad decided to do their first dance at the end of the evening instead of the beginning – it worked out wonderfully!
Gene did a wonderful job setting up the place card table above! The decor was done by Amy Guzzardo of 1-800 flowers, and it truly looked amazing! Photography for the evening was in the hands of Sam Sarkis, and Premier Video Productions worked alongside him all night – they stayed until clean-up!
The cake looked beautiful, towering over the guests and awing them all as they walked onto the stage!
Some added bonuses the bride and groom threw in for their guests included:
- The wonderful 48 foot sweets table pictured above
- A Cappuccino cart for late night smoothies and hot beverages
- An artist on the stage painting the scene (how cool is that?)
- Flip flops for all the dancing (guests were begging for more songs at the end – it was packed at 12:30am!)
- Beautifully packaged favors
Salma will also be having her bouquet turned into a painting with Curly Art – I can’t wait to see how that turns out! Congratulations on a beautiful wedding Salma and Mohamad – it was a blast! I hope you have a wonderful time in the Maldives!