Many years ago we did a Xmas wedding marquee. The bride and groom wanted lots of Xmas trees with fairy lights, fairy lights in the roof, fairy lights around the sides. If any guest stood in one spot for too long they’d probably want fairy lights on them too!

Sadly this was pre-internet so sourcing white strings of fairy lights turned out to be an impossible task. So I spent 2 days covering green strings of fairy lights with white insulation tape!

Xmas trees with fairy lights? -no problem as long as you’ve got plenty of extension leads to run round the marquee. Xmas trees in the roof? -no problem you can hang them above or below linings and they look good.

Fairy lights around the side of a marquee are slightly trickier and I remember just thinking I’d get on site and ‘wing it’. The problem is people really want them hung around the eaves, but that’s where the swag is. One option is to drape them round and round the swag but I didn’t think that looked very good. So in the end I came up with going behind the swag and poking each fairy light up through the velcro holding it on to the roof so just the bulb is showing. The end result is surprisingly good (sadly the photos are long gone).

For weddings or occasions where people just want subtle lighting effects I think just having fairy lights criss crossing the ceiling is perfect. But for those customers who just want fairy lights everywhere then above the swags is very effective.

Thanks for reading

Spencer

PS Apologies for the delay, I was out of the country yesterday

Nearly every time you use a marquee lining it will be to go in your standard marquee stock and (if it’s one of ours!) will fit perfectly. Easy.

But sometimes you have to fit a lining somewhere unusual. It might be lining a customers porch, it might be lining an unusual walkway or just making good to a house. At some time in your marquee hiring life you will need to do this.

So how do you get attachments in a lining without damaging it? Follow these instructions:

Step 1: Find a decent sized pebble (about 4cm diameter ideally) and place it on the good face of the lining (ie the side you don’t need to get a fixing)

Step 2: Scrunch the material round the pebble at the back of the lining

Step3: Tie a cable tie tightly around the scrunched material and also include an extra cable tie (this gives you your fixing).

And there you have it, a fixing in the middle of a lining that looks okay from the front (you can’t see the pebble) and gives you a fixing at the back without damaging the lining.

Thanks for reading

Spencer

I mainly use this blog to pass on advice or tips that I’d have liked to have known when I was starting up a marquee hire business. I sometimes use it to announce new products as i. they’ll be designed with hirers in mind and ii. I need to make a living! Very occasionally I’ll use it to make announcements.

This is one of the latter.

Marquee swags: We make roof linings in large batches, when people order a marquee swag upgrade we then take a made roof and add the velcro so the new swags can be attached (or left off to still use as a pelmet finish).

We’ve had several instances where people have ordered roof linings and assume that we remember/look up the fact that they need velcro on for their previously purchased swags.  Please don’t do this, always always specify you require velcro when ordering new roof linings -we offer it free but we don’t offer it as standard.

I’m away next week (there’s a barrel of cote de rhone red with my name on) but the factory’s still open (some might say running more efficiently in my absence) if you want to order anything.

Thanks for reading

Spencer.

Anyone who has a DIY Marquee with our swag upgrade or 9m+ wide linings will know that swags and pelmets are velcroed on once all the other linings are up. The idea is they are there to give a finishing touch to the lining (and they hide all manner of cables and fixings).

If you just velcro the swags up in place without much thought then it will show, these uneven swags for example:

Apologies for the photo quality but you can make out the swags are uneven and not stretched out.

Here’s what they should look like:

You can see they’re straight and evenly spaced out.

The trick is to pull the swags out straight as you go. The swags don’t need to be velcroed to the roof every inch of the way, if the roof is bunched up a little then pull the swag across it before velcroing. Try to bypass any Velcro that rises up a little on the roof if you can, this will keep the swags looking more even.

Thanks for reading.

Spencer.