Actividades: Chinese New Year Chinese New Year is the longest and most important celebration in the Chinese calendar, which lasts for 15 days. Why not apply the traditions of this celebration in your next event? At Chinese New Year celebrations, people loves to wear something red. Why not ask your guests to dress in red (or the event personnel). Red symbolizes fire, which the Chinese believe drives away bad luck. This colour can also be applied to decoration as well as furniture such as chairs, sofas, cushions and puffs, etc. Red is always in fashion! Chinese New Year ends with a lantern festival. Use decorated lanterns as the main decorative element in your event, and take advantage of their colours to create a warm and welcoming atmosphere, as well as Chinese caligraphy also as decoration on tables and walls, or simply hang them from the ceiling. Dont forget: to put red envelopes on place-plates with “lucky money” in them. The highlight of your event, as in the lantern festival, can be the dragon dance (the dragon is typically made of silk, paper and bamboo) or the lion dance and play Chinese music (preferably live, choose between a chinese orchestra for soft soothing music or a loud inviting chinese drum performance). For food, serve “Loveletters”, coconut-fragranced pancakes for desserts, or “Steam boats”, a soup casserole with seafood, meat and vegetables, which guests have to “fish out”, a very participative meal. Trung Thu A mid-fall festival commemorating the moon at its brightest and most beautiful. Traditionally, the festival also marked the end of harvest (in September). Put on colourful masks (which your event staff can wear as part of the costume) and star-shaped lanterns lit with candles. The lanterns, which are made out of bamboo and plastic, represent the moon, and can be perfect as table decoration or hanging from the ceiling, to create a “starry night”. Some of the popular shapes include fish, stars, butterflies and a lantern that spins when a candle is inserted, which represents the earth circling the sun. Dances are also traditional, and include the dragon dance and the flower dance. Typical Trung Thu food are “moon cakes”. Shaped like fish or flowers, the sweet cakes are filled with lotus seeds, ground beans and orange peels and have a bright salted egg yolk in the centre to represent the moon, an original catering proposal for guests. Diwali Signifying “a row of lamps”, Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, mainly looked upon as the beginning of New Year. To recreate Diwali in your event, create a chill out atmosphere with typical oil diyas —a sign of welcome to the gods Rama and Lakshmi— made of clay and lit like candles. Put some of them together on a round tray with Oriental motifs for a nice visual effect both as decoration and lighting (small flames shining together). Fresh flowers and colorful rangoli, an intricate pattern made in rice flour, are typical decorative elements in Diwali. Traditional motifs of Rangoli designs welcome the Goddess of wealth and prosperity and are drawn with rice flour and vermilion powder, which can also be used as decoration on tables or an area of the venue, surrounded by candles. Diwali typical dish is Coconut Barfi, fried coconut cakes with cardamom powder and decorated with fresh grated coconut. Mardi Gras Get the carnaval into your event! If you wish to give your event a different Carnival feel, why not get inspiration from the New Orleans Mardi Gras. Masked balls and parties, crazy costumes, kings, queens and special jesters, the star character of Mardi Gras. The official colours for Mardi Gras are purple, green, and gold, which gives you a rich palette for the decoration at your event (why not golden plates, purple tablecloths and green glasses…). Purple represents justice, green stands for faith and gold stands for power. Music comes from brass bands, special Dixieland (a live orchestra would be a great treat for guests). A detail you can’t miss in Mardi Gras: colourful beads (originally thrown to people in the parades), as a gift or as decoration on tables or as colourful accessorise for your event personnel (as well as fun jester hats). A new touch for a traditional celebration...