Neon is No Longer Just for the 80's

From the desk of Phoebe Allen

This towering neon wall, coming in at 12ft wide and 9 ft tall, you see below was about a year in the making.

It all started when our client showed us this photo below. A little inspo for all the neon that was to come

We put our heads together, and alongside with some amazing vendors, we were able to complete the task!

The first step was hiring the right vendor to actually build this wall! Mystic Scenic was up for the job and my contact there, Ally, was absolutely amazing to work with. She was the one to produce the layouts you see below that helped us spatially visualize the wall. And mind you, this was probably proof 4 or 5 of the wall! We went through many rounds, getting the neon signs right and keeping in budget.

The next step was gathering the neon signs. This wall was comprised of Amped and Co (who helped produce the custom signs,) Locomocean, Neon MFG, Electric Confetti and then some Etsy and Amazon signs. It was a collaboration of all these vendors that made the wall come together.

Then came the Covid -19 virus and it impacted the delivery of many of these signs. Even though we had ordered the signs about three months prior to the event, I was getting daily emails saying that some of the signs were being stuck in transit due to shipping delays from the virus.

As a planner, I plan every step of the way and I know that nothing is perfect. As much as we try to plan down to every detail, sometimes things happen, and THAT’S OK! My job is to fix the problems with ease and to come to the same end goal but maybe on a different path.

This neon wall was the true star of this party. No neon signs meant no wall and I was not going to let that happen. I worked with Mystic Scenic to develop a backup neon wall with the neon signs we had in house, and then additional neon signs we could order on amazon and knew the shipping would arrive in time. After countless calls/emails all the neon signs finally arrived ONE DAY BEFORE the event!! How crazy!? Seeing this wall come together in person was a truly magical experience. Please see photo below of me hugging the wall when it arrived on site.

Now, this neon wall was only 12 feet of this event! I haven’t even gotten to the rest of this space…

The client wanted their event to be super sleek and clean, and it was also a reception style event, which gave us the ability to utilize a bunch of lounge furniture. I immediately thought of Taylor Creative. An awesome rental company with cool and different designs. We found this giant blue velvet couch and decided that would be the star of the show and the rest of the furniture would be black to accent it. We also wanted to use their light up bar. Normally it lights up only white, but we were able to work with our lighting designer, SBL, to make it pink!

The other aspects of this event I would like to note are the food stations. Since the whole theme revolve around this neon wall, we wanted to bring some sort of neon into the food. We wound up hanging neon food signs that correlated to the food at each station! We even had one for valet!