For anyone unaware The Showmans Show is a must-visit for any marquee hire business. Every supplier to the trade has a stand there, it’s where you meet all of the required contacts/suppliers as well as keeping in touch with any new products that are coming on to the market.

The show is at Newbury Showground on 20th & 21st October

We’re going to have some new ideas and products available, we’re working on them now so I won’t mention them just in case they don’t get through testing in time!

Thanks for reading

Spencer

This is all about passing on advice so you don’t make the same mistakes I did and one of my (many) mistakes was lifting. As someone who puts up marquees I assume you’re well aware of the need to bend your knees not your back and to avoid twisting when carrying a heavy load. What you may not have thought of is which shoulder you always carry stuff on, invariably you will favour one.

In my many consultations with back specialists and physios after my injury it became apparent that the muscles were completely out of balance and were making dealing with the injury very difficult. This was purely from carrying everything on my right shoulder.

So short and simple message today – if you want to avoid joining me in my pilates class every week (think James Nesbitts Yellow Pages ad on Yoga) then look after your back and share the load over both your shoulders.

Thanks for reading

Spencer.

PS 4m wide marquees are now back in stock

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.

One solution is to buy some ’stock photos’ (I can’t recommend one particular site so just google it to see what I mean).

If you’ve been in business for a while and suddenly a new business pops up who look as if they’ve already done wedding marquees similar to the Beckhams then this is probably the answer, they just bought some stock photos.

Saying this, you do have to be a little careful here.

• The photos look good. That’s why you bought them after all but..
• Chances are the photos aren’t of your style of marquee. What if someone comes along as says – I want one of those!

You also have to be careful of misleading customers (even Burger King are at it). My personal view is by all means use them but be very very selective on the photos you buy. Choose ones that show people having a good time at a wedding/party for example rather than one that shows an unknown marquee in detail.

Thanks for reading

Spencer

Theatre style seating is something you come up against now and again, often people have the legal wedding in a registry office the day before and then have a celebratory ceremony in a marquee on the day. But they’ll be looking to you as the marquee supplier to advise what space they need. Here’s what we used to allow:

For every chair (without arms): 0.5m wide x 1m deep. Most chairs (bistro, gilts etc) are 40-50cm square, you then leave a further 50cm at the front to allow for leg room.

For aisles: allow a path 2m wide (conveniently the same width as our red marquee carpet if you want to make a nice feature of it).

Here’s an example layout:

So of the 6×12m area you’ve got 12 seats on one side of the aisle (taking up 6m) and 8 seats on the other side (taking up 4m) leaving a 2m aisle down the middle – it’s off centre otherwise you’d have a leg at the end of the aisle on the way in/out!

This layout works better in landscape rather than portrait. If you imagine trying to have the same marquee with an aisle going the other way through the marquee it would only leave 2m (4 seats) on either side. 9m wide marquees work a little better that way round as you can fit 7 seats either side of the 2m aisle.

This may not be useful to you right now but keep the dimensions and ideas handy as you will be asked for this at some point through your marquee hire career!

Thanks for reading

Spencer

Several people tell me it’s easier to hang guttering using bungees rather than cable ties. Easier it may be, better it is not.

Even if you’ve got a good fall on it water is still going to weigh down a gutter, this pulls down the bungees in the middle meaning that middle section of the gutter holds water. When it holds water the bungees get pulled down even more, this continues until water overflows the top of the guttering. That is not a good thing.

Second point: You want to avoid getting kinks in a gutter, if you’ve got a kink in it water will get held up and sit in the bottom.  If you’ve got a 6inch high gutter with 2″ of water sat in the bottom then suddenly you’ve effectively got a 4″ deep gutter. Less than ideal.

The secret with hanging a marquee gutter (wake up competitors, this is the bit you’ll want to copy/steal) is to pull it out taught as you go along:

1. Lay the gutter out between the marquees with an equal length overhanging each end
2. Start in the middle of one marquee and cable tie tightly in place. Work your way out to either pulling the gutter taught and cable tying in place (leave the cable ties slightly looser towards each end to create a fall on the gutter)
3. At this stage you should have a gutter hanging down from one marquee.
4. Repeat stage 2 in the second marquee ensuring no kinks form as you go along.

Guttering is very easy to do, once you’ve done it a couple of times it will become second nature.

Remember good guttering is also part of planning – always avoid ‘T’ shape guttering as it never works. Better to have three marquees side by side than attempt two side by side with one across the end.

Thanks for reading.

Spencer.

We’ve been offered this occasionally in the past but the frequency has gone up recently so thought I’d pass on a word of warning:

Don’t accept a cheque for more than the desired amount and refund the difference. Even if the cheque has cleared in your bank account.

This sounds a bit odd and it might be that you’re never offered this so don’t worry.  If you do then just refuse. It’s a way of money laundering. At least I’m assured that’s the case, my knowledge on the subject is similar to the guys from office space (awesome film).

Thanks for reading

Spencer

But there is another solution.

Say you’re supplying two 6×12m marquees with a 6×6m marquee to one side and need to add a catering area somewhere. You could actually supply three 6×12m marquees and partition one of them in half. This saves you work and looks a little neater from the outside.

Partitioning a 6×12m marquee in half is very easy, put solid walls on the side of the catering area and hang a 6m end wall where you want the partition (tie a rope across and support it in the middle to get fixings). In the non-catering area hang a standard 6×6m roof lining, from the inside this will just look like a standard 6×6m marquee.

Keep this in mind when you’re planning layouts etc.

Thanks for reading.

Spencer.

Anchoring the marquee down. If the marquee is going up on a sand school then the ground will probably be solid enough under the layer of sand to take marquee stakes as if it were on grass. If it’s on a beech then the soft sand will go deeper so you need longer stakes, more of them or heavy weights.

Dance floors. If you put a dance floor down on sand or even on top of carpet with sand outside eventually the sand will work its way on to the dance floor. From experience I know that’s a bad thing. We didn’t even consider the implications of doing a large wedding marquee on a sand school until we went to pick the marquee up afterwards – the sand had been walked in to the marquee and on to the dance floor. Throw in 150 people strutting their stuff and the effect was like sandpaper scratching our lovely parquet dance floor all night! An expensive lesson learnt.

If you are offering a dance floor in a marquee near sand then use one that can be re-stained (wooden dance floor) or incorporate in to the price re-lacquering the top surface.

Thanks for reading.

Spencer.

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.