This wedding took place on the property of a boutique hotel adjacent to a heritage forest in Qualicum Beach, far from any urban center. It would be a fairytale wedding in the woods for a family from Ontario, who had previously staged weddings for other daughters in luxury hotel ballrooms. For the youngest of their four daughters, they were apprehensive not only about hosting an outdoor wedding on the west coast but about the marriage and new life of their youngest, to be lived so far from home. The staging of this outdoor wedding needed to come off flawlessly to meet the sky-high expectations of the Ontario family and their guests, many of whom would be travelling from across the country to attend.
For this affair, no acrylic clear top, white marquee, or gabled trac tent would do. For this wedding, our crew was tagged to supply our newest and most stylishly elegant event covering, the Tidewater Sailcloth tent. Having made the investment in 2021, we were the only event rental company on Vancouver Island, and indeed, much of the province of British Columbia to carry these new arrivals on the wedding scene. These structures create voluminous open spaces inside with just slender posts as their internal structure. Sales literature promises that the sculpted peaks of these beautiful tents enhance daytime events with warm natural light, and glow as day turns to evening. Our twin-peaked structure did not disappoint… meeting with parental approval, and then some.
The bride’s parents arrived the day before the wedding and inspected the structure. They were blown away by the elegance of the space even before it was decorated… before the installation of a custom designed floral bower, before the space was lit by chandeliers and string after string of twinkling lights, before the arrival of place settings, table cloths, and silver, before the caterers presented their first course, and before their guest relaxed into the evening celebration made comfortable by the warmth and practicality of heaters placed throughout the space.
Magnificent in scale, the gentle sweep of the creamy white sail cloths was the perfect foil to the shadowy forest & trails of the park next door, and a wonderful backdrop and jumping off point for design decisions made by the floral team and other decorators, the catering team, and the host of vendors from across the Island pressed into service for this elegant affair.
The tent for this wedding measured an expansive 43 by 63 feet, and in addition to banquet tables for a sit-down meal, it also accommodated a 19 X 19-foot dance floor, a beautifully appointed lounge area and a cocktail area with high-top tables also supplied by our company. This was only the second installation of a sail cloth tent by our team. Our first experience took place on a windswept and rainy day on the University of British Columbia campus earlier that spring. By comparison, measuring and laying out the location of this tent, its perimeter legs and center poles and then gently raising the fabric peaks this time was almost easy.
While the structure’s aesthetic is all fairytale elegance, like the UBC event, its strength and engineering were tested once again, for after set-up, our tent withstood a torrential west coast downpour, fortunately, one day before the wedding.
