Empire Surmounts Many Challenges to Produce The Wedding of the Century in Florence, Italy
When International Event Designer Colin Cowie Lifestyle sought a full service production & talent partner with international capabilities to partner with on a multi-million dollar wedding project in Florence, Italy, they chose Empire Entertainment to provide a broad range of services including production design, staging, sound, video projection & A/V support, labor, electrical power, stage management and talent booking & logistics.
The wedding program for 150 guests from around the world ran for a full weekend and included a Friday night event at the Castello di Vincigliata in the Tuscany Hills, a luncheon event in a Florence sculpture garden, a one-of-a-kind wedding ceremony and an unforgettable reception and after-party at the Palazzo Gerini in Florence.The spectacular wedding Ceremony was held in the Orsan Michele Church in central Florence. The ceremony featured, among other highlights, Steven Spielberg walking the bride down the aisle, a 14 member ensemble of Italian musicians playing ancient Italian musical instruments, an Italian children's choir, a choral group from Sweden and a gospel choir from the United States, Patti Austin and James Ingram working under the direction of Quincy Jones, The Poem of Rumi read by Deepak Chopra, an aria sung by opera legend Andrea Bocelli and a ceremony led by none other than the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
To stage this extraordinary event Empire utilized its extensive network of contacts throughout Europe to deliver the very best production technicians and craft people. Empire planned, organized and led the efforts of this multinational team of experts to execute a large series of incredibly demanding events in a very short period of time in a locale that presented many unique challenges in addition to the customary language & cultural barriers, communications difficulties, time zone response time lags, customs hassles, work permit & visa issues and archaic music licensing statutes.Empire delivered flawlessly under these adverse conditions and was able to integrate and orchestrate its efforts perfectly with the dozens experts on the Colin Cowie design team.The resulting weekend and wedding was one of the most extraordinary weddings ever staged.
Guests received their first taste of technological innovation at registration, where they were welcomed by name on a reactive LED screen installation covering the full width of the entry wall. A large lunch café was created with a décor scheme that incorporated custom-built, ceiling-high steel LED frames draped with foliage to create smaller, intimate restaurant-style spaces that displayed both technology and nature.
A series of breakout sessions presented content targeted to attendees’ varied interests, while imagery displayed throughout the venue showcased real-life applications of how products designed to empower developers help to unleash the power of data and reimagine possibilities that will improve our world.
Every element of Microsoft Connect(); from registration, breakfast and keynote, to lunch and evening cocktails, were custom-designed to communicate exacting brand messaging and to deliver a high-touch guest experience to this important audience. The keynote and breakout sessions were livestreamed through an onsite studio built for this purpose and content was watched online by millions around the world.
Empire is proud to collaborate with Microsoft on this annual, top-tier business communication event.
To view excerpts of Connect(); 2017, please visit https://www.microsoft.com/connectevent
