Stacks of chairs in marquees

There is one wedding marquee we did that sticks out for several reasons. It was the largest wedding we were doing that year and a lot of work had gone on beforehand – many many site visits and alterations but it did promise to be quite a special marquee.

Having been on site most of the week on Thursday afternoon we were just about there, just the chairs to carry in and some outdoor lighting to set up. Caterers usually set up on a Friday but in this instance they were there on the Thursday afternoon too to get a head start, I guess it was also their biggest wedding of the year.

Some caterers prefer you the marquee hire company to lay out all of the chairs. Others prefer the chairs left in piles by each table to make laying the table quicker and easier. This caterer was one such that preferred piles of chairs for them to put out later.

The banqueting chairs (of a very particular colour with certain shade of seat pad that had been changed many times!) were carried in in piles of 10 and left by each table.

I was on the phone outside when all of a sudden I heard “NOOO!!…CRASH!…CRASH! CRASH!…”

I ran in to find carnage, a pile of chairs had toppled over on to a table that also then set another couple of chairs over like dominoes. Fortunately no one was hurt except a load of broken glasses, chairs and crockery. The caterer was very practical and in an hour everything was resolved, I have my suspicions that if it had been one of our lads rather than one of theirs that had knocked the chairs over it might not have been dealt with quite so calmly.

We were very lucky but there’s lessons to be learned from this:

Never leave chairs in tall piles, they are simply too unstable. Leave them in maximum 5’s for plastic chairs or 3’s for banqueting chairs.
Check with the caterer if they want you to lay out the chairs or not. If you can’t speak to the caterer then lay the chairs out as standard.
Try and avoid other suppliers working in the marquee before you’re finished. If you aim to have wedding marquees finished by the Thursday evening then they have all day Friday to set

Thanks for reading

Spencer