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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
