The Best Night of the Year: 5 Award Banquet Ideas You Should Try at Your Next Event

Stop. It's banquet time.

Who doesn't love a good awards ceremony to honour our local athletes? Banquets are great fun, but they do always come off a little bit...formulaic.

If you're looking for a way to spruce up your awards banquet, you've come to the right place.

Here are 5 creative banquet ideas to try out at your next event.

1. Create a Theme

What's a party without a good theme? Tailor your theme to the age group of the people attending the event. If it's for the younger generation, make the theme appeal to them by taking a few different ideas to a vote beforehand.

If it's a grown-up banquet, you go with an Academy Awards theme. If you want to take a more non-traditional approach, you could do a western theme or something based in a specific time period.

2. Custom Trophies

If you want to have a banquet to remember, nothing brings back memories than having a custom trophy on your mantle from the event.

If you know who you're giving awards to before the event, create custom trophies with winners' names engraved on them. You could even assemble a team to decide what the trophy should depict.

Trophy companies have loads of options for trophy-toppers these days, and yours should be special.

3. Keep People on Their Toes

Try and avoid the monotony of a typical awards banquet by modelling after big-time award shows like the Brits or the Grammy's. If you've got performers in attendance, you can set aside breaks in the awards for musical performances.

If there are no musicians already at the ceremony, don't be afraid to hire a local band or artist to come in and perform. It's great exposure for musicians to perform at events where people are seated and attentive. Plus, you can pay them.

4. Go Big on Features

If there's a decent budget, you can support local businesses with it and go big on your set pieces. Decorate the stage with large gilded objects and have nice centrepieces on the tables. You should pay special focus to the food and drinks portion of your budget as well.

Hire a local caterer to supply you with a luxurious dinner and maybe a few drinks if that's appropriate. Remember, it's good to have something for the parents if it's an event centred around the kids.

5. Your Name In the Lights

When focusing on the stage setup, it's good to have screens so that everyone in the room knows what's going on. Use screens or a lighting rig to have the award winner's name displayed so the people in the back can see who won.

Lighting, in general, is very important at a banquet. You should keep the room dim and feature the more extravagant lighting on stage because the stage should be what everyone's looking at most of the time.

Other Banquet Ideas

The beauty of having some creative freedom when it comes to your awards banquet is that you can surprise people. Most of the attendees will be coming to the event expecting the same old kind of banquet.

Make it your mission to blow all other parties out of the water with your innovative banquet ideas. Always think outside the box and worry about the logistics later.

To order a custom trophy, check out our huge list of trophy types.