Sperry Tent Layout

Hello, friends! Thank you for your wonderful comments on my last post! I find it so interesting to hear the changes others have gone through post-marriage, so thank you for sharing.

One of the most frequently-asked questions I’ve gotten in the last few months is about the layout of the Sperry tent from our reception. Random, I know (which I why I never posted about it on the front end), but it seems as though there is a dearth of information on the interwebs about tent layouts, so I am happy to oblige!

In addition to the great beauty of their tents, I think one of the best things about the Sperry experience is their online layout tool. I found it by going to the page for my local office, then clicking on “Products” and “design your own event.” No download needed — hooray! You can choose the size of your tent and fill it with any furnishings you have on your rental order. This tool is super comprehensive, and was unbelievably helpful in figuring out, for example, exactly how many 8′ tables we could fit in a corner instead of leaving it at, eh, that looks like it might fit. The tent poles are marked and everything. Here’s the final layout we came up with:

Because I’m a little nutty, I made another version that showed which linens went there, to assist my set-up peeps. That looked like this:

The Sperry tent designer lets you save your layouts in your account for future fiddling, and also lets you export them for sharing and printing. Genius.

People also seem to be curious about what size tent we rented. It was a 32×70′. It ended up being perfect for our number of guests (about 115) — but only because we had a beautiful day, and people and tables could spill out the edges of the tent. If it had been raining or less pleasant and we had had to have the flaps down, I think it might have been uncomfortably tight. If our budget had been flexible, I would have gladly opted for the next size up.

On a final note, one other thing that Sperry did that I loved: after they walked our reception venue with my Mom, they sent over an aerial view of the space with our tent size and shape superimposed. I’m not sure how they do this (Google Maps??), but I thought it was helpful, and it also felt pretty darn luxurious — like they had really done the legwork on prepping for our event.

A few more photos from our reception:

Any more tent questions? Ask away!