What to Rent for a Sweet 16, Quinceanera or Mitzvah

What Makes a Milestone Party Different?

One person has to be visible, repeatedly, to a room that is mostly seated.

There is an entrance. Usually a candle lighting, a presentation or a first dance. Often an outfit change. Every one of those is a moment where a couple of hundred people need to see one person clearly, and round tables make that hard at floor level. A wedding can get away with a flat floor because the couple are together and the crowd comes to them. A milestone party cannot.

So the question is not how big a dance floor you need. It is where the guest of honor stands when the room turns to look.

Does the Guest of Honor Need a Stage?

Usually yes, and it does not need to be large.

At the Hyatt Regency Long Island in Hauppauge we built a 6ft by 12ft stage at 24 inches high with 4ft-wide two-step stairs on both sides. Stairs on both sides matter more than the size does, because it means the entrance and the exit are different paths and nobody has to reverse off a platform in a gown.

Twenty-four inches sounds like a lot until you have watched a presentation from the eighth table back.

Do You Need a Runway?

Not always. But it turns an entrance into an event.

For a Sweet 16 at Galloping Hill Caterers in Union, New Jersey we built a 4ft by 20ft runway with a 16ft cross piece at the tip, so it formed a T. The walk is the 20 feet. The T is where she stopped, turned, and every camera in the room got the same shot. Without it she would have walked twenty feet and arrived at nothing.

If a runway is on the table, our runway sizing guide covers width, length and the seating question in full. The short version for a party rather than a show is that 4ft is plenty, and the room dictates the length.

Can You Build More Than One Stage?

Yes, and the most ambitious one we have done was a mitzvah.

That booking was four separate stages at once. Two 4ft by 12ft side stages flanking a bi-level DJ riser on the sixth floor, the riser stepping from 8 inches up to 16, and then an 8ft by 20ft performer stage at 24 inches high with its own 4ft-wide two-step stair at the back.

That last one was specified for the building's roof. It rained, so it went indoors instead. Worth knowing that a build planned for outside can be moved, but only if somebody has thought about where it would go.

Four stages, one party, and the biggest of them relocated on the day because of weather.

You almost certainly do not need four. The point is that the units are modular, so a room with two focal points is a configuration question rather than a budget catastrophe.

How Early Does the Crew Need to Get In?

Earlier than the venue will suggest.

The single stage at the Hyatt was a half past one set-up for a seven o'clock event. The four-stage build started at 1pm for a 5pm start and ran to midnight. Neither of those is a slow crew, it is what happens when you add a loading dock, a freight elevator, and a room that is being set for dinner at the same time.

One thing worth knowing if the party runs late. Cocktail tables and bars run on battery lighting, six to eight hours a charge, so they get switched on for the party and not for the load-in. Backup batteries extend that to sixteen or twenty hours if the night is long.

We deliver, install and break down across the tri-state area, from Manhattan and Brooklyn to Long Island, across New Jersey and up through Connecticut.