Who: Adam Aleksander and friends
Where: East Village Loft
How many guests: 70 per night
What time of year: July 2009
Reason: Carnivale of Ascension Masquerade Dinner party

For Halloween week, we have a special party to feature– a masquerade dinner party held three nights in a row.

Entertaining for one evening can seem daunting, so entertaining for three nights straight can seem nearly impossible. Luckily, Adam Aleksander and his friends were up to the challenge.

Through some impressive collaboration and hard work, the group created an insane masquerade dinner party known as the Carnivale of Ascension. Done out of sheer passion, I could not believe the epic nature and madness of the affair. Check it out.

Adam says:

The event was a three night masked dinner party chronicling the transition from life to death.

Everything was themed; from the food and bar to the decorations to the staff and performances that guide the guests throughout the entire evening.

I did this event for my friends.  At that time, I was in charge of making the Christmas windows for Macy’s, Saks, and L&T.

We were all laid off for the summer and down on our luck, so we decided to get together and create a dinner party.

We dined on a succulent feast laced with ritual.

The meal came in three parts: hors d’oeuvres, whole roasted animals and vegetarian delights, and desserts like the sponge cake that were ritualistically devoured off doily clad nudes.

We also had a wide selection of cocktails but the favorite by far was made up of jalapeno infused sauza hornitos plata, fresh watermelon juice, brandy, all served in a sea salt rim.

Wine and beer were also provided of course.

We decorated the entire place to look like the bridge between life & death. We painted all the walls, added flowing french curtains to the windows, and built twelve long, low lying tables.

Everyone sat on the ground for a more rustic feel (and because we ran out of money, time and resources).

Each night, the guests were to arrive masked, some as the Living, some as the Dead.

The masks were then removed and the Living dined with the Dead and the Dead welcomed the Living into the afterlife.

I couldn’t have done this without a lot of unpaid help from some really great people. In addition to donating our time and materials to make it happen, we needed to sell tickets to fund it and pay for the chef.

They only started selling four days in advance of the event and it was the most terrifying thing ever for everyone involved. Thankfully, in the end, we pretty much broke even.

While I was not a professional at the time, this event led to me to want to do events professionally. We were all amateurs, but realized we could pursue this as a career, because of how the public reacted. For me, it is truly a triumph story.