Le Dîner en Blanc Comes To Grand Rapids
With international travel on hold for most of 2021, Le Dîner en Blanc sent participants on an uplifting holiday in our own city, thus making them feel like they were on vacation in the south of France! The festive and community feel of this long-standing French picnic tradition will not change even though, the number of guests attending was limited. And as always, the location remained secret until the last minute.
Grand Rapids hosted its very first Le Dîner en Blanc on September 11, 2021 in one of the city's iconic public spaces, which happened to be at Veterans Park in downtown Grand Rapids.
To participate in this first edition, participants signed up on the waitlist via the official website grandrapids.dinerenblanc.com
"I had seen this on the internet about this event happening in Washington D.C. and I immediately wanted to do something like this but in the mean time, I had been spending time with Christian Grant and we had done a few events together. I found out that Indianapolis was having their first one and I had gotten invited to it. After attending that white event, I knew that we had to bring something like this to Grand Rapids," said Organizer Tyrona Guy.
"The international parent company I found out is in Quebec, Canada and was started over twenty years ago with a guy in France who had moved away and come back and wanted to spend some time with his friends and celebrate that they were back together again. It was great that we could do this after a whole year of being locked down because of the pandemic and no one being able to celebrate life and celebrate each other. I told Christian that I really wanted to host this, so we talked about doing something similar in Grand Rapids and she informed me that she had seen some pictures of Angela Nelson attending the event that was held in Chicago and she suggested that we talk."
The three ladies got together, talked and decided to form an LLC which was a process similar to purchasing a franchise.
"We had to fill out an application, be interviewed and provide a resume," said Guy.
"We also had to do an outline of everything that had planned for hosting the event and then we were interviewed. They then decide whether or not they want to have you as a partner and we became the first in the state of Michigan to hold a Le Dîner en Blanc. It was really exciting to be able to do this because this is something that not even Detroit had done before. They do something similar that is non-official, even though people think that it is an official event, we are the first to be licensed to hold this event in the state of Michigan. The location of the event his a total secret until participants basically get there. Normally what happens is that people meet at departure locations. They get on buses and bus themselves to where ever the secret location is.
"Due to the pandemic and only having about five months to plan instead of the usual year to plan the event, people were not quite comfortable with being on busses and being close to each other so some of the guidelines changed," said Tyrona. "We followed the template from start to finish, but people were allowed to have their tables separate and we didn't do buses so it was all walking to a pedestrian location. Grand Rapids Community College was very gracious in allowing us to use their parking structures at both campuses. We used parking structures throughout downtown, so we had five departure locations and everyone met at the same time and they were shocked because no one has really held anything like this at Veterans Park. Everyone thought that it would be held on the Blue Bridge or at the Calder. We surrounded the Library and East Park Street and we surrounded the park along with VIF (Very Important Friends). We had Brown's Funeral Home and R 3 Stations as sponsors and we also collaborated with The House of Detroit for the VIF media lounge event. We also hired vendors to do food and alcohol and partnered with Baxter Community Center's employee Sandra who was very gracious and really helped us to be able to pull this off."
Everything was done in pairs and the cost was eighty-four dollars per couple. Participants had to bring their own tables, chairs, linen, plates and glasses with the understanding that everything had to be white.
"People came dressed in all white and it was just amazing to see how many people from Grand Rapids supported this dream that we had," said Guy. "They could order food from our online store or they could bring their own food. People were very creative with their table scapes and it was just nice. We even had one table group leader named Jamacia Adams who got everyone in her group to meet up a week before and practice setting up their tables and chairs within ten minutes."
Dinner commenced with the waving of a cloth napkin, which is what Pastor Nathaniel Moody did after he blessed the food.
"It was amazing," she said. "We had people looking down on us from near by apartment buildings and people cheering us on as we walked to the park. We had a light and sound production system with put together for us by PJ The DJ and the sound system was amazing. It was also exciting to see everyone from the City Manager to the Superintendent of Grand Rapids Public Schools there. The city really came out and supported this event and we are looking forward to doing it again next year."
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