CAFE de PARIS ~ Fall Dinner 2008

Just a little disclaimer here! Blogger seems to be messing with this blog! :) Does anyone else see blue "F's" everywhere and "this picture is unavailable" all over the pictures?

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The Student Council at our Bible School asked me to help with with decorations for the Fall Dinner this year. It is a dinner put on (in the Fall :) for the students, staff, faculty and board.

Each year they turn the chapel of the high school building into a banquet room with a special theme for this formal dinner.

Here was the invitation:

The theme they wanted was a "street side cafe in Paris, at night"! :)

Unfortunately, I have never been to Paris, so we did lots of looking online to find out what a street side might look like.

We decided to create these 5 shops:

CAFE de Paris - our cafe

(with "2nd story" apartment/billboard above the cafe)

La Roseraie - a flower shop

COLETTE - dress shop

TEA & TATTERED PAGES - bookstore/tea room

PAPABUBBLE - candy store

We had fun researching online for the names of our shops. Some (if not all) of them are names of actual shops in Paris. I did alot of cutting & pasting from different images online and came up with the below for a plan... not necessarily this color scheme, but this general idea (pardon the scrunched up picture, I did this in excel, which does not talk to blogger too well!!
This was our plan for the layout of the chapel

After hours of shopping, planning, discussing, changing, and changing again! :)Here are a few pictures of what we came up with.

The chapel has a tall dome ceiling that we completely covered with black plastic and hung silver stars from to create a nighttime feel.

We had some awesome artist do all the detail painting for our shops

(THANKS!! to Ryan J., Vicki C. & Chad C.)

Here is the "2nd story" apartment/billboard set above our Cafe.

The Cafe

Bookstore/Tearoom & Candy Shop

Looking thru the window of "Tea & Tattered Pages"

Up close of the candy shop...it wasn't quite complete in this picture, but it was fun to create.
The students cam up with the idea of having real candy out at this shop. It was a great touch, and everyone could "help themselves" during the course of the evening.

The Flower Shop
My very creative mother was the artist of this shop. She free handed the sign, researched all the French for the "Store Hours" sign on the front (including "Closed on Sundays"!! :) and overall did an excellent job of creating a romantic, welcoming feel to this outdoor flower shop display.

Dress Shop

The Tables

Denise M. (mom of one of the StuCo members) came up with the greatest idea for centerpieces.

She painted these candle holders black, then adorned them with grapes, grass and crab apples.

The picture below, does not show it, but right before the banquet she set apples on them with a tea light candle set in a small hole carved in the top of the apple.

They were perfect!! Then we also set basket of bread on the table as part of the decor/appetizer.

The Menu/Program

At the entry way to the chapel was a 17 foot cardboard structure of the Eiffel Tower. The guest entered under the tower, which was a neat effect. Not sure why I didn't get a picture of that! Remember, I am NOT a photographer! :) Because of the low lighting in the room, it was hard to get real clear pictures overall, but this is the idea!

I think the students and other guests had a great evening! The food was delicious, and the speaker was inspiring.

Here was our verse for the evening:

Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars...she hath also furnished her table. Proverbs 9:1-2

When we gave the speaker that verse, I thought "wow, that might be a difficult verse to build a message out of!". Later he said that someone had once told him that the Chapter in Proverbs that corresponds with the day of the month on which you were born is like your "life chapter". His birthday is on the 9th of the month, so he had practically memorized this chapter when he was younger. So he was very familiar with these verses and gave an excellent talk on wisdom.