Category Archives: Party

Romantic love songs

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If you’re thinking of planning a celebration for that someone special in your life then you’ll need a special love song. If romance is in the air for you, you may want to check out our best romantic jazz recommendations, for some of the most beautiful songs and performances out there here are our top romantic music picks…

– My Funny Valentine, by Chet Baker. This song is beautiful – melancholy, heartfelt, with tongue-in-cheek humour and ending with a beautiful sentiment, this song has it all, and Chet’s delivery is the best I’ve ever heard. His simple, elegant voice brings the songs to life and then some.

– At Last, by Etta James. A classic, the audition song of teenage girls everywhere (for good reason). Sexy, sultry, powerful and incredibly delivered by Ms James.

– Teach Me Tonight, by Nancy Wilson. It’s cool, it’s classy and it’s a little bit cheeky – the story of someone who thinks they have a lot to teach a potential partner, who at first may seem unwilling (but comes round in the end…). Nancy’s delivery is just gorgeous.

– I’ve Got a Crush on You, by Ella Fitzgerald. Did you ever have daydreams about singing this song to your crush, who would be sat in the front row of the audience, gazing adoringly. After hearing you singing this song, he’d yours forever.

– L-O-V-E by Nat ‘King’ Cole. It’s like honey and butter, heated up and stirred together with lots and lots of sugar…. At least, that’s what it makes us think of! A checklist of the things that make a person special, spelling out the essence of the day. It’s love, isn’t it?

Don’t forget the kids

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If you are organising a party or event and there are children present then here are a number of party entertainment ideas to ensure that if yours is a child-friendly day, that the kids are happy throughout the event to leave the adults to enjoy some adult time…

Petting Zoo
The best thing about hiring a petting zoo is that everybody can get involved and enjoy having animals at your wedding. Just like balloon modellers, this idea is perfect for guests both young and old. Children will be in their element as they pet the animals inside the enclosure and they may just be allowed to feed them as well!

Face Painting
A simple and traditional idea and one that always goes down brilliantly, face painting is a hugely popular affair at every event. Whether children would like to go for a tiger look or a butterfly, there are numerous options available to ensure that every single child is happy on your special day. With friendly face painters available all across London, we are confident you’ll be very happy with the results!

Balloon Modellers
There are a number of fun balloon modellers to hire that can entertain children in a variety of ways. Not just for children’s parties, these superb artists can make pretty much anything out of their very special balloons. Whether a child would like a dog or perhaps even a hat ‘made’ from Pineapple and other delights, our balloon modellers are more than up to the task. Unlike other children’s entertainment, you might just find your adult guests wanting to get involved as well!

Venues for events

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The Floating Cinema
This is one of London’s top 8 coolest art venues in 2013, the floating cinema is now available for private venue hire offering a unique event space for product launches, corporate away days, film shoots and special occasions.

This intimate venue has a capacity of 12 passengers when cruising and 20 people standing while static. The Floating Cinema is a purpose-built wide beam barge with a flexible ‘whitespace’ auditorium that offers a unique and original experience for guests. The space can be easily reconfigured to accommodate meetings and team building sessions. As a cinema it offers state of the art high-spec lighting and surround-sound facilities, a fully equipped cinema auditorium space and a stunning central viewing deck from which guests can enjoy a new perspective of London’s most iconic views.

Beach Blanket Babylon
Is a decadent venue in trendy Shoreditch perfect for exclusive events and celebrations with an impressive capacity of up to 800 people. The venue has a number of opulent event spaces on offer that lend themselves perfectly to stylish corporate networking events, cocktail receptions, corporate event dinners, gala events, conferences and fashion shows.

The Champagne Lounge is ideal for private parties of up to 300 guests with rich wooden surrounds, decadent mood lighting and unique decorations. The Gallery offers a versatile self-contained space, with rustic wooden floors and white walls it is the perfect blank canvas for conferences and exhibitions and can hold up to 175 guests. The Mezzanine and The Bar are both gorgeous spaces; The Mezzanine elegantly holds up to 70 guests while the vibrant cosmopolitan bar holds up to 250 guests.
To complete the look and enhance the atmosphere Red Masque entertainment have a few Swing and Jazz bands on our books from London to provide standout musical entertainment that will.

The Warner Bros Studio in London
Home to Harry Potter film sets – offers an exciting event space not just for fans of the Harry Potter franchise. Corporate event organisers can choose to host exclusive dinners and award ceremonies in the Great Hall, sip cocktails and tankards of butter beer in the Three Broomsticks, and host networking events in Dagon Alley.

What better entertainment to accompany a corporate event in the place where Harry Potter was filmed than a string quartet that will create an atmospheric setting fit for the Harry Potter films and could even play the film franchise’s iconic theme tune!

Ice Venue

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The Ice bar will give your guests an experience that will be a talking point for months to come. Ideal for receptions, hen and stag parties and even team building exercises as staff brave the environment with an icy cocktail in hand! After the 40 minute session you can recline in warmer areas outside of Ice bar. They can dine on delicious dishes in the restaurant which has a capacity of up to 180 guests standing. Enjoy drinks and canapés in the smaller lounge with space for 45 guests or the ground floor cocktail bar for up to 70 guests.

This is one of the most unique party venues that London has to offer; just off Regent Street. As the name suggests this stunning venue is made completely out of ice – the walls, bar, tables and even the glasses – kept at -5 degrees all year round, this venue isn’t just a seasonal occurrence.
Using the clearest ice, a team of skilled ice designers and sculptors create this stunning ice landscape, which is completely reinvented once a year. Sessions are booked in 40 minute time slots due to the low temperature inside the venue and guests are given thermal gloves and capes to wear when experiencing this amazing environment!

London is one of the world’s most multicultural cities offering a whole host of exciting attractions and activities that you won’t find anywhere else. Amongst the bustling streets is a treasure trove of unique venues perfect for hosting corporate events and private functions. You can look forward to venues with stunning Birds Eye views across the city, boudoir-style cabaret clubs, a floating cinema and the UK’s only permanent ice bar and to name only a few…

No corporate event is complete without entertainment to impress and engage staff. Red Masque entertainment directory has a number of walkabout acts that would fit perfectly with this cool venue. Our canapé girls will look right at home wrapped in elegant furs handing out mini oeuvres will add to the winter atmosphere and create a great talking point.

Visual effects

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As with most corporate events, your décor should be key. Your venue needs to wow your guests from the moment they walk in, creating a special and uniquely defined space for your event. Two highly contrasting themes are high tech interactive and natural materials, enabling your company to show off its tech prowess, or boost its eco credentials.

You could extend the theme beyond décor and food into acoustic musical acts, for a more ‘natural’ sound.

Take lighting to the next level and illuminate your event to create spectacle and visual interest. Any venue can be transformed with clever and creative use of lighting even on the more limited of budgets.

Use lighting to throw unusual shadows, to colour tables rather than using flowers, and use wireless technology to alter lighting states to reflect the various stages of your event. Look for party bands and DJ’S with their own light shows, hire function bands that provide their own lighting, and artists that use light in imaginative ways.

For larger corporate events, book artists that have a strong visual impact enhanced by theatrical style lighting, such as dance troupes, ballet dancers or aerial artists.

Choose musicians that blend performances with tech, such as our interactive VJ’S, or a live DJ. Get
your guests interacting with each other playing giant games with your very own theme.

Find ways to make your entertainment a pleasure for everyone by choosing acts that blend superb musicianship with accessible humour, such as a comedy string quartet. Or present musical acts with an international flavour, such as 1920s swing band just make people smile!

Don’t hire the same old stuff

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We at Red Masque have the best unique artists to hire out for your special event; we have below suggested some great things to consider. Gone are the days when when entertainment used to be a singer, magician or a bad comedian. There is alot of exciting and different entertainment available now which is unique and very clever. Here is just the tip of the iceberg for a suggestions. If you look on Red Masque Directory you will find a vast array of great entertainment for hire which will suit any event.

If you do decide for your private party that you are going to travel into town and visit some extravagant wine bars, why not hire a limo and be treated like a star all night too! You could include some true star quality and hire your own Paparazzi photographers to follow you wherever you go – you’ll be guaranteed to attract plenty of attention and have some fabulous shots of your night to treasure forever!

If you think that your party group are the outdoors type, then have you considered organise some giant games to play outside. Another great idea is circus training! Your party can learn a range of amazing circus tricks taught by professionals and come away from the party with a skill to enjoy and show-off for life. These artists are so much fun and guaranteed to thrill all your guests.
How about a Murder Mystery Night? Mingle your guests with brilliant characters and watch a murder unfold before your eyes leaving the guests as detectives trying to found out “who dunnit”! It’s a superbly thrilling evening where you learn who to trust and who not to trust while you work out who committed the terrible crime but beware of twists in the tale….!

Alternatively, you could hire some themed dance acts to really get all your guests in the spirit at they dance the night away in their themed dress. Don’t forget to include some suitable dance entertainment such as some Burlesque dancers which will be very entertaining for both sexes. There are a whole host of entertainment to book, just glance through all of our entertainment for hire to give you some more ideas.

Make it different and your guests will be amazed!

Hire some excitement

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Do you love to see acts that keep you at the edge of your seat or are toe curling? Do you in need of a bit of excitement? Why not hire a few acts that will do just that.

Be more creative and hire some party entertainers which would be a bit extraordinary and a crowd drawing experience. Dare to be different and make it a night to remember where your guests will be talking about your party for months to come.

Fire acts are very entertaining where the act or acts jump through fire hoops or indeed set alight!! Knife throwers are also nail biting, dare your audience to participate while this professional act throws knives at him or her.

A sword swallower is another act which is very intriguing to watch albeit between your fingers!! We’ve all seen the Britain’s got Talent sword swallower, that got everybody talking!!
Maybe you want to be ahead of the rest and want to hire some tightrope walkers or stilt walkers to draw in the crowds to direct them to your special event. Maybe you could be launching a new product where people will be curious as to what was going on.

You would have to agree a stilt walker handing out flyers would be a bit more unusual than your average Joe handing out leaflets.

If you need some inspiration think about Covent Garden in London. We think it’s not just about the shops or the great restaurants but the ambiance of the street entertainers. If you have ever been to Covent Garden, you will see there are always small crowds wrapped around a Mime artist or indeed Living statues intently watching their every move or lack of movement if they are a statue!!!

Playing Cards to solve crimes

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Playing cards are seen with pretty much every party magician and you have probably learned or been the witness to a very clever card trick at some point or another. But did you know they can help solve crimes?

The idea behind using playing cards to help solve crimes isn’t necessarily a new one but it’s never been used in such a way before now. Back in the early 2000s, the US military infamously handed out decks of playing cards to troops with the faces of important people involved in the Iraq war. After enjoying a bit of time off playing cards, the idea was that the troops may well recognise a face when out on patrol and take down the 4 of Clubs (to give an example picked at random!)

In 2013, the state of Florida decided to copy this idea, replacing the faces of the playing cards with the faces of murder victims. We know, it’s all rather macabre for this blog, especially considering our jazz murder fact a couple of weeks ago! But this is a fascinating fact and we just can’t help but share. Each playing card of ‘Cold Case Cards’ look like the ones posted above and they retail for a couple of bucks, often being the only deck of cards available to bored prison inmates at the penitentiary shop.

But why bother? The answer of course is in the phrase ‘loose lips sink ships’. When inmates play with one another or perform a magic trick for others, somebody might spot a face that they recognise or recall some information that another inmate may have bragged about previously. Realising that the information they now hold could result in their own reduced jail time, these inmates pass on the facts to a warden and the crime may very well be solved.

The idea of putting the face of victims of crime on playing cards has been a definite success with many other states taking up the scheme and according to the New York Post, over 40 crimes being solved since their introduction. Amazingly two murders were solved in the space of a week just last year!

May the force be with you

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Star Wars never goes out of fashion so here’s a few ideas to get you started as you ponder whether you should go as Luke Skywalker, Han Solo or Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Upon entering the party, have a drink – a Star Wars cocktail perhaps? – at your Star Wars themed bar before venturing on and sampling the entertainment. Hopefully this won’t be in a galaxy far, far away but fairly close by.

As you meander through your hired event venue, you might begin to notice a few recognisable faces. Whether you’ve gone for lookalikes or costumed characters, a Star Wars party is only really complete when you feel as though you’re in amongst the action. Other Star Wars party ideas might include an area to duel with lightsabers.

Naturally upon entering the party, you’ll be wanting to experience the delight of Star Wars from the get-go with a string quartet playing the Star Wars theme. This has worked at many previous film-themed events. It gets people in the mood to have fun and more importantly, puts them in the right mindset for what is going to be a thrilling experience.

We love a BB-8 inflatable balloons, naturally you can always pick someone else from The Force Awakens, but BB-8 is quite clearly the cutest choice. And once that’s done, you can savour the memory of the occasion by basking in the glory of a Star Wars Photo Booth.

And finally, as the party is fully underway, it might be an idea to ask your party band to turn up the music and play the ultimate song. Enjoy your evening and ‘May the Force be with you’!!!

Throw a Private Detective party

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Are you a fan of Sherlock Holmes or do you love a good detective series? Whichever person you are; you’ll still love our fabulous ideas to create an unmissable Sherlock Holmes party theme.

Silhouette Artist
These amazing silhouette artists can even cut in various props should you desire them. So yes, every guest could be posing with a Sherlock themed prop if you so wanted! All that’s required is paper, scissors and a little time to stand still and your guests can go home with a wonderful original prop to remind them of the evening!

Eyecon Art
Eyecon Art is one of the coolest new acts on the entertainment events circuit. Sitting down with your guests, a photographer will take a photo of your eye, which you can then be sent at a later date. Now in terms of looking for clues, it’s all about seeing the bigger picture…and who hasn’t seen a famous drawing of Sherlock Holmes with a magnifying glass to his eye?

CSI
This game basic format allows for a variety of guests to ultimately solve a crime through a variety of team building activities. Do you have what it takes to be a resident of 221b Baker Street or are you resigned to simply writing about the case in a style of Rd. Watson?

Violinist
Aside from cracking crimes, Sherlock Holmes is also known for his love of music, in particular gazing out at London’s clientele whilst playing a good old-fashioned violin. a violinist will no doubt go down a storm at your Sherlock party.

Costumed Character
Now what about putting that violinist into a costume? We can see it now. Deerstalker hat? Pipe? Whether you’re thinking the old fashioned version of Sherlock Holmes or the new Benedict Cumberbatch infused creation, we’re more than confident that tweed will get a look in. But which other characters should be present? Rd. Watson? Mrs. Hudson? An appearance from Moriarty wouldn’t go amiss either.

If you’re holding a Sherlock Holmes party or have been inspired by some of the various acts, then do have a look at our party themes on our website to inspire you even more!