Our 10th Annual Halloween Client Event was in the spirit of our love of Offbeat Weddings & Events – A Victorian Vampire Ball. We were unsure of whether to call it a Ball or a Wedding. We almost had a couple decide to get married at the event. In the end, they decided they preferred our help in Las Vegas to pull of a more simple, but elegant affair.
For this year’s event, a Victorian Vampire Ball, we encouraged everyone to come in theme (but did not require it). The decor inspiration started with the Amaranthus, Love Lies Bleeding plant. 
It even sounds vampiric. I saw this plant and knew immediately how I wanted to decorate. We used the Amaranthus, the colors red and black and loads of chandeliers and satin fabric everywhere.
We draped the entire dining room from floor to ceiling with red satin fabric, draped red satin fabric outside from our trees to our porch, hung chandeliers in the trees, on the porch, a fantastic red chandelier on the porch over one of the food tables. We draped red sheer fabric with lights across and down the driveway for our dance floor and we covered our pink craft fair canopy in red satin fabric and decorated it with Victorian furniture we purchased on Craig’s List. The Victorian sofa we found was a steal, but was the wrong color, so we painted it red – yep painted it. The very helpful folks at Dharma Trading Company provided me with great advice on what to buy and it turned out great. The sofa doesn’t have that icky plastic feel and nothing comes off on your clothes.
In our living room area, we cut out made silhouettes of bats on the computer and printed out and cut hundreds of them and taped them all over the walls and ceiling. I also created a ‘blood wall’ by creating a dripping blood design on the computer and printing it out and pasting it together above our fireplace. We also bought and taped up a blood border for another wall and finally, we bought about 60 small hanging bats and tacked them to the ceiling.
We wanted wow factor bar areas, so along with tall tables draped in satin fabric with centerpieces that were made out of candelabras, feathers and crystals, we also built a bar that we made out of crates. We purchased crates, painted them grey then painted white and rubbed that off as we painted to give it an older feel. We put 2 of our peanut barrels together, cut a piece of wood to fit the top, then started stacking the crates to figure out our design. Once we figured it out, we zip tied the crates together. From there, we drilled holes in the tabletop and put very long sturdy pieces of steel rods through the holes and into ground beneath our deck. We then zip tied all of the crates to the steel rods. Now that the crates were sturdy, we were able to decorate. We draped the base in satin fabric, then draped more satin fabric through the crates and decorated them with skulls, candles and other Vampiric items.
In the frontyard area where we have our grapevines, we created a dungeon cellar area with skeletons and cemetary headstones as well as a crypt in the corner with a cemetary guard and his skeleton dogs.
On our front porch, we took an old shelf of my grandmother’s, painted it black, hung it from nails on the wall and decorated it with lights, skulls and candles and then hung lights on the ceiling of the porch. From there, we hung more red satin drapes and more chandeliers.
In the dining room, along with all the draping, we covered the table in satin fabric and put food on varying heights of risers to give the table dimension. We found a great crystal riser on sale and used that to display red fruits – pomegranate cut open and dripping as well as red grapes dripping off the riser. We kept it simple and finger food delicious by having Boudin Bakery cater breads, crackers, cheese, meats – we removed all the food items from the cardboard containers that they came in and used silver metal trays we found at garage and rummage sales. Speaking of rummage sales, we also found red and black pillows and red satin sheets at our local VA rummage sale that we used to cover the outdoor seating and make it more upscale.
The backyard was the kids’ area – we draped the metal poles of a canopy in many, many bags of spider web and hung a giant spider from the center. Pizza and gatorade was the food and beverage of the night for the kiddos. We set up our xBox and borrowed 2 others so the kids to play video games outside in the backyard as well as run around with pirate swords.
Prior to the music and dancing, we set up a screen that hung between the driveway/dance floor and the backyard and set up a movie seating area on the back patio. Once the movie finished, the screen turned into a shadow dancing screen for the dance floor on the other side.
For our big wow factor, we built a horse-drawn carriage. Our friends who loves to weld and wanted an excuse to teach his kid to weld, offered up his services. Once the frame was welded, we went to Home Depot and purchased the wood, cut it, painted it and drilled into the frame. We decorated the carriage with a coffin holding a vampire, a skeleton on top and lots of flowers a la a New Orleans style hearse carriage. Because this was built with steel, it was able to hold people, so we built a bench for people to sit. And, because you can’t have a horse drawn carriage without a horse, we couldn’t resist buying the skeleton horse that was being sold at Home Depot this year. This will definitely get more use in future events.
Our prior and hopefully future clients had a great time and we hope to one day consult on another fun offbeat event like this. Here are the pictures of this year’s Victorian Vampire Ball – enjoy!
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