TEXTILES.ORG
A new kind of tent debuts next to a family’s nostalgic stone chapel.
For a bride who had her heart set on getting married in a small chapel with a 17-person capacity on her family’s historic farm in Chester County, Pa., figuring out how to seat 100 guests was a challenge. The family had strong emotional ties to the farm, which had been in the family for generations, and having the ceremony in its little stone chapel was the vision from which the rest of the wedding details emerged.
Lansdale, Pa.-based EventQuip worked with event planner Katharine P. Warden and her assistant Christina Hadlow of TableArt, Wayne, Pa., to provide a unique solution that merged with the historic and pastoral setting for the June 2014 wedding. The logical plan was to install a tent next to the chapel for overflow seating—but one that blended with its surroundings. What EventQuip suggested to the clients was not only a tent that didn’t detract from the setting, but one that added the kind of ambiance they desired—a tent from Aztec’s newest product line, the Timbertrac™ Collection Frame Tent system. This was the first event at which a Timbertrac was installed, and part of what made it the right aesthetic choice for this event was its architectural truss beam design, with wood-like aluminum beams and attractive joining plates that mirror craftsman-style construction.
For the ceremony, the bridal party and immediate family were situated in the chapel, while guests sat at round tops in the 30-by-50-foot tent to watch the ceremony simulcast on two large monitors. After the ceremony, lunch was served in the tent. “The luncheon decor was very minimal,” says Ed Knight, EventQuip’s owner. “Because the tent itself was so beautiful, the planner felt that more decor would detract from the effect.”
The day of the wedding was forecast to be sunny and temperate, so the gable ends of the tent were left open. Had the forecast been for inclement weather, EventQuip could have closed in the structure with fabric gable panels and walls.
After the ceremony and lunch, 250 guests were invited to a reception under a 60-by-80-foot Aztec Series 1000 tent with a Wenger STRATA® floor, both of which were installed nearer the house by EventQuip—with considerably more effort. “We had an eight-man crew put in two long days building a 6,000-square-foot level floor with an 8-foot-high, 60-by-100-foot tent on top of it just 750 yards away on the same property,” Knight says, “and all any one talked about was that cute little Timbertrac.”
“The Timbertrac fit in so well with the surroundings it looked as though it belonged there,” Warden says. “It was the perfect solution to providing shade for the ceremony and luncheon. It fit perfectly into the surroundings. In fact, the client commented that they wish they could have it up all the time.”