TEXTILES.ORG
Clifton Park Rental Center creates an enchanting Adirondack-style wedding
on a mountain in Lake Placid, N.Y.
More than a quarter mile of winding driveway up a mountain in Lake Placid, N.Y., Clifton Park Rental Center, Clifton Park, N.Y., created a high-end, rustic Adirondack wedding fitting of its majestic surroundings. The tents’ placement and decor created a seamless transition from the out-of-doors to under the tent, complete with custom-built cedar trees, birch branches, Adirondack-style lounge furniture and antler chandeliers.
Planning for the September 2012 wedding began a year earlier, requiring several trips to the site with the entire team—rental company, caterer, florist, decorator and transportation company.
Beautiful as the site was, it presented significant challenges for layout and load-in. The client requested a cocktail tent, dining tent, catering tent and restrooms but the only place even close to being large enough to accommodate the 20-by-35-meter dinner tent was a tennis court abutting a hill, and it was 8 feet too narrow. The client took the fence down that bordered the tennis court and dug out the side of the hill to create enough space. Clifton Park Rental put the 15-by-15-meter cocktail tent on a driveway overlooking a toboggan run, connecting the two with walkways. “I had to buy more 22½-degree turns from Anchor to make it work—it was straight angles,” says Michael Frodey, Clifton Park Rental’s president. “I already owned four of the turns and bought another eight. It was part of the capital investment that we will definitely use again.”
The crew loaded the equipment—tents, party rentals, flooring, lighting, HVAC, restrooms, generators and electric—on two tractor trailers, which they parked at nearby horse show grounds, and off-loaded onto smaller flat beds and trucks to bring up the narrow, winding driveway. The guests were shuttled up on small limousine buses. “The buses could only go up one at a time,” Frodey says. “They dropped off the guests, made a three-point turn and went back down for more.”
Once up the mountain, guests were treated to a rustic, welcoming scene. Jay Dawson of Major Pieces, Saranac Lake, N.Y., was responsible for much of the illusion of bringing the outdoors in. Dawson, who creates hand crafted Adirondack furniture and unique functional art, covered the legs of the tents with hollowed out cedar trees, into which he drilled holes to place branches. The effect was stunning. He also lined the walkways with birch branches to create the feeling of walking under a canopy of birch trees.
Clifton Park Rental provided the antler chandeliers, which have been a part of their inventory for years, as well as farm tables that they added to inventory last year. Based in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Fine Affairs Inc. decked out the rest of the decor, including the lounge furniture, and Hidden Gardens finished the scene with woodland floral arrangements. On the day of the wedding, rain fell on the cleartop tents, adding another layer of coziness to the event.
“Events of this magnitude need a lot of pre-planning and reasonable timelines,” Frodey says. “It was a great event, which solidified our reputation as a premier tent company in our market.”