Christmas party themes for your corporate event

Choosing from the many Christmas party themes is never easy, and when you've got 200 guests to cater for, including kids, the challenge is even greater.

Faced with this very task, Metricon Homes in Queensland wasted no time calling on their local party hire professionals, Excel Events, to work their magic on the Christmas party. 

With an impressive portfolio of corporate events and functions under their belt, from weddings to major expos, the team at Excel Events helped their client pull off a day to remember with a minimum of fuss.

The brief

"The brief was to provide a marquee and furniture to accommodate Metricon's entire staff and their families, so it was a bit larger than your standard corporate event," explains Excel Events owner and manager, Jeanette Cuthbert.

After consulting with the client and discussing the floor plan for the event, a 20 by 40 metre marquee was settled on. Excel Events also recommended a jumping castle to keep the children entertained. 

"If you're going to have a day-long event with children along, it's important to cater for them," says Jeanette. 

The right location

Fortunately for Jeanette and her team, the chosen location for the marquee - a golf-course driving range at Sanctuary Cove resort on the Gold Coast - ticked all the right boxes for ground surface. 

But Jeanette warns that this is often not the case, and businesses need to do their homework before choosing a marquee location. 

"A lot of locations may not be appropriate or will incur extra labour and costs to be made suitable for a marquee," she says. "For example, if the ground is on an incline we may have to put in a floor and raise it at one end." 

The result

According to Jeanette, the whole process was a breeze, even though access to the event location was tricky. 

"Sanctuary Cove is a fairly enclosed environment, so there were restrictions on the size of trucks that were able to go through the areas," she explains. "But this was nothing a bit of careful planning couldn't overcome."

From start to finish, the marquee and furniture took two days to build and one day to pull down. "This is fairly standard," says Jeanette. "But often at popular venues there may be a booking the next day, in which case we'll have to do a night shift to pull it out - people need to factor this in." 

For pain-free corporate parties 

There's more to organising a successful corporate event than meets the eye. By calling in the party hire professionals early on and getting their advice on venue selection, you can avoid a lot of pain and cost further down the track and make the right choice from a range of christmas party themes.