Used tables and chairs for sale

Before we start exploring new products for the 2011 season (our 31st year in business!), we're looking to clear out some of our inventory from 2010.

Items for sale:

• brown and white Samsonite folding chairs
• 6' and 8' banquet tables
• 4' and 5' round tables
• 30" wide x 30" tall cocktail tables

All prices are listed here.

Thanksgiving Celebrations!

What are you doing this weekend?  If you're in to festive occasions, patriotic music (including the world-renowned The Tops In Blues (the Air Force's premier entertainment showcase http://www.topsinblue.com/about-us.html), and activities for all family members, then you should probably consider the 15th annual Thanksgiving celebration, held at the birthplace of Thanksgiving, Plymouth!  Here's a link to their website for full details: http://www.usathanksgiving.com.  If you're worried about the weather getting in the way, have no fear!  B.C. Tent will be supplying a handful of tents (they'll be heated), ranging from 30x30 to an enormous 60x150!

See you all there!

A scene from last year's celebration

B.C. Tent at the MATRA Games

This past weekend, B.C. Tent attended a conference called MATRA (Mid-Atlantic tent renta association) in Rhode Island. This weekend-long festivity-filled event features manufacturers' newest products, seminars and vendor shows, and of course, the MATRA games.  The games feature competitions in various tenting activities, such as stake pounding, stake throwing, tent lacing, and more.  Now this might sound pretty uneventful, but this is something we look forward to every year!  We're also very proud of our Crew Chief, Mark, and Rodrigo who together came in 2nd place in the 2-man stake driving contest.  Their time was 9 seconds.

MATRA wasn't all games for us.  We attended seminars on customer service, tent flooring, upscale lighting and décor, and even a workshop on automated inventory management.  So, congratulations to Mark and Rodrigo, and we're excited about the new things we learned and can't wait for next year's MATRA!

Loving the Creativity!

The Bride's Maid and Party Designs did a fantastic job transforming a B.C. Tent Co. tent into a exquisite, intricate shelter for a promotional event!  Take a look!

New Employee Bios

We'd like to welcome Jen and Jon, our newest employees, to our team!

Jen, a recent graduate from Brandeis University, is going into her third year at Boston University to pursue a doctorate degree in physical therapy.  When she's not hard at work, Jen enjoys cooking, playing tennis, and black raspberry ice cream.

Jon is going into his senior year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he's pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree with a concentration in Psychology.  In his spare time, Jon enjoys hiking, traveling, and creating mischief with his roommates.

Jen

Jon

www.bctent.com

Walling Creativity

When most people consider their various walling options (solid, café, cathedral, and mesh), they typically don't realize how much flexibility there can be.  You can choose to completely enclose the tent, have walling on only two sides, or just pick and choose sections that you want to have walled.  In the picture below, this beautiful wedding tent only had about half of a side enclosed, centered behind the dance floor and DJ area.  Having the walls (cathedral, in this case) by the dance floor focuses attention to that area of the tent.  So, even if it's a warm summer night, a touch of walling can be a great addition to the tent!

www.bctent.com

B.C. Tent @ The Fisher House

The Fisher House™ in Boston, the newest addition to the national Fisher House family, recently had its grand opening at the VA hospital. B.C. Tent was proud to provide several large tents and seating for the event, and was even featured on Chanel 7 local news (unfortunately, we couldn't find a direct link to the video). The Fisher House, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, is a national foundation that provides a "home away from home" for families of patients receiving medical care at major VA medical centers. The homes are professionally decorated and styled specifically to their region, and feature libraries, playrooms for children, and other amenities.









If you'd like to support the Fisher House foundation, you can do so through their website http://www.fisherhouseboston.org/contribute.html



www.bctent.com

The Bradley Estate

Since I talk about the Bradley Estate so much with one or two sentence posts on Facebook, I've decided to devote a slightly more lengthy blog post to it. For those of you who don't know, the Bradley Estate is a historic property located in Canton, MA. It's maintained by the Trustees of Reservations, whose mission is to preserve properties of significant historic, scenic, or ecological value for public use in Massachusetts.

On the 90 acres of grounds lies a gorgeous Georgian style mansion, constructed in 1902, that is often rented by couples for their weddings. The setting is nothing short of breathtaking. It doesn't offer ocean views or a sparkling cityscape, but it provides a unique, serene setting that will transport you back to the early 1900s. It's no surprise that so many couples select it as their wedding venue.

Take a look at some shots from the most recent wedding that B.C. Tent did on site.

The front facade

A totally classic feel

Guests having fun with a creative photographer

The sun goes down and the tent lights up!

Beautiful glow inside

www.bctent.com

History lesson

Today's history lesson:

At the start of the 1950s, people who needed extra seating for their events would go to funeral parlors to borrow chairs. As the 50s progressed, funeral parlors became smarter and realized that they could charge people to "borrow" their seating (nothing's free these days). Entrepreneurs started their own chair rental businesses, and other new companies offered a more complete line of rental equipment (Source: American Rental Association). The rental business in general has evolved quite a bit since then. Today, you can rent virtually anything you want, from cars to tents to clothes to movies. Check out http://www.renttherunway.com/?destination=rtr_home, a company that allows you to rent "runway" fashion.


www.bctent.com

Dressing a Tent

At the minimum, a tent provides shelter from the sun and elements. It's dependable and sturdy, has varied functionality, but really it's just a skeleton of its potential. To take full advantage of a tent's potential to impress, there are several "accessories" that can be used to dress it up a bit.

Tent liners -

The smooth style creates an open, elegant interior that has an almost pillow-like feel that adds rich texture and depth.

Tent liner, no pole covers

Pole covers -

Let's face it, metallic poles in the middle of your wedding or other lavish function are not the most attractive things. Fortunately, many tent companies carry standard white center pole covers to "hide" the center poles. Also, most event decorators can custom make pole covers to suit the design scheme of your event.

Center pole cover, no tent liner

Leg skirts -

Definitely not obligatory, but leg skirts can add a little bit of flare to your tent.

Leg skirts, no pole covers or tent liner

www.bctent.com

The Special Formula

Ok, it's not really that special. But believe it or not, there is some rhyme and reason to how we select a tent type and size for an event. We call this The Special Formula, and it goes something like this:

• First, we consider the number of guests. Let's use 100 to make the math easy.
  
• If the event is a sit-down, then the guests need tables. At 10 guests per table, we now have 10 round tables (5' in diameter) for seating. We like to allot 100 square feet per guest table, so we're now at 1,000 square feet for our tent.
  
• Next, we factor in other items, such as buffet tables, bars, cake table, DJ table, etc. We allow for 150 square feet for bar and buffet tables, so if our event has two buffet tables and two bars, we're looking at another 600 sq. ft., which brings our total to 1,600 square feet.
  
• If that's everything we're having, then we'd be looking at something like a 40x40 pole tent. Here's what the layout could look like:
  

This size tent would be pretty perfect, and there's still a little bit of room if we wanted to squeeze in a DJ table.

But what happens if we want a dance floor? That makes things a little more complicated. Since it's likely that not all the guests will be hitting the dance floor at the same time, we tend to allow for space for about half the guests at a time. Of course, if your event requires otherwise, we can plan for all the guests to be dancing at once as well. But for our event, we'd be looking at a 12x16 area for the dance floor, which comes out to about 2 square feet per guest. (Since the dance floor panels are 4x4, the best we could do for this is a 192 square foot area.)

Here's how it would affect our layout:

We're faced with some pretty major changes here. The table behind the dance floor is for a DJ, since the two basically go hand in hand. Adding these two items pushed our tent size from a 40x40 to a 40x50, giving it 400 extra square feet (for a total tent area of 2,000 sq. ft.).

So, while the formula may not be that special, and is subject to vary quite a bit for individual cases, it gives us a pretty good starting point.


www.bctent.com

Understanding the Rental Process

First time customers can sometimes be perplexed when they're confronted with what they consider to be an overpriced tent. For an inexperienced consumer, this perplexity is understandable. After all, a tent is just a tent, right? Well, the rental business has a little more depth than it is often given credit for. For us, a tent is not just a tent.

It doesn't set itself up

With any rental order there are a number of factors that the rental company has to take into account. For example, when a prospective customer calls and says that they’re looking for a tent for wedding reception of 100 people, we can’t simply chose a tent that fits 100 people. There’s much more to the process than that, and we need to take into account certain variables. Let’s look at the venue. Is the tent going to be installed on grass, pavement, or sand? Is the lawn graded so that we need to install custom flooring? In order to make sure a site is appropriate for a tent, experienced rental companies like B.C. Tent send over professional consultants to evaluate a property and to answer these important questions, among others. These are just a few of the many variables that we need to address in order to ensure a successful event.

It’s also important to consider the time it takes to actually install and take down a tent. For a small canopy, we typically plan for about an hour for installation. Larger tents (40x60 pole tents) are even more time consuming, taking about four hours on average to set up. We take pride in our meticulous installation and take-down processes, because lack of diligence and poor attention to details can lead to safety hazards for the customer and their guests.

When a tent is finally set up, whether it’s in a backyard for a BBQ or on a football field for a commencement ceremony, the customer expects the tent to look as good as possible, as do we. What’s often overlooked, however, is the amount of work that’s put in by rental companies to maintain the presentation of a tent and other items. In our warehouse we a have a room that’s solely devoted to cleaning and caring for our tents. From our experience, most customers don’t quite understand the amount of work that goes into maintenance. If you owned a tent yourself, you would have to spend many hours bleaching it to keep it white and mildew free, and you would also need a place to store the tent and all of its components. But when you rent, that’s all taken care of.

I've covered a bunch of information here, but this is only beginning to scratch the surface. There's the interaction with event planners, the process of sub-renting equipment, and other things to take care of. If you're really interesting in learning more about what we do, feel free to give us a call. 1-800-586-TENT

www.bctent.com

Top Three reasons

My Top Three reasons to rent a tent for your wedding:

1) Customize everything to have your event exactly how you want -- from the tent to the tablecloths.

2) Do things on your own time -- the flexibility of a tent rental company allows you to take as long as you need to set everything up and prepare for your event.

3) Be outdoors in any season. Tents allow you to plan your wedding without worrying about the weather. With a tent, you can hold your event in any venue you'd like -- a botanical garden, sandy beach, or your own backyard.


What are your Top Three?

www.bctent.com

BC Tent on WeddingWire - press release

WeddingWire, the nation’s leading wedding technology company, has just announced that B.C. Tent & Awning Co is officially WeddingWire Rated 2010! WeddingWire created the annual Rated program to honor wedding professionals, like B.C. Tent & Awning Co, for their excellence and to help brides and grooms easily find the right wedding professionals to match their needs.

“We are excited to unveil WeddingWire Rated 2010, now in its fourth year. With hundreds of thousands of reviews, WeddingWire has made it easy for engaged couples to find the nation’s very best wedding professionals,” according to Sonny Ganguly, WeddingWire’s Chief Marketing Officer. “WeddingWire Rated is an excellent way for businesses to showcase their continued success in the wedding industry.”

B.C. Tent has three reviews with an average of 4.5/5.0 rating, making them eligible to hold the Rated title on the WeddingWire Network. Each review has been written by our former clients and includes detailed ratings and insightful descriptions of their experiences with our services. These reviews not only enhance our credibility, but also help differentiate our business within the WeddingWire Network.

B.C. Tent would like to thank their past brides and grooms for taking the time to review our services on WeddingWire.

If you are a past client of B.C. Tent & Awning Co and have yet to provide us with your feedback, visit reviews.weddingwire.com and review our services today.

www.bctent.com

BC Tent on WeddingWire