Leanne and Walker held their reception on the pool deck at Westshore Yacht Club in South Tampa, with the marina on one side and the water on the other. It is a beautiful place to put two hundred guests and a genuinely awkward one to furnish. Gabro supplied three things for it: the dance floor, the acrylic champagne glasses, and four white umbrellas.
A dance floor makes a room out of pool decking
Pool decking is not a floor you can dance on. It is textured on purpose so wet feet do not slip, it drains toward the water, and it is unforgiving to heels. Laying a white dance floor over it solved all three at once and did something else besides: it drew an edge.
An outdoor reception has no walls to tell people where the party is. The floor becomes that instruction. Guests read the boundary immediately, tables get placed around it rather than through it, and the DJ has an obvious thing to aim at. Without one, dancing tends to happen in a loose scatter wherever the music is loudest.
Levelling matters more here than anywhere indoors. A deck that slopes for drainage is not flat, so the subframe has to take up that fall before the surface goes down. Done properly it reads as though the venue was built with it.
There is a maintenance argument too. Dancing directly on decking marks it — heel dents, scuffs, spilled drinks driven into a porous surface — and a venue that hosts weekly events notices. A floor laid on top absorbs all of that and leaves with the rest of the order.
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Acrylic instead of glass, a few feet from the water
The champagne glasses were acrylic. On a pool deck that is not a downgrade, it is the correct specification. Glass that goes over near water is a genuine problem: fragments scatter across a textured surface, they are close to invisible against pale decking, and some of them end up in the pool, which then has to be cleared before anyone can use it again.
Acrylic also travels better. Trays crossing open decking in a breeze are steadier when the glassware is light, and coupes in particular are easier to carry in numbers when a knock does not end in a sweep-up.
Guests notice far less than people expect. At night, under string lights and with a bottle going round, a well-made acrylic coupe photographs and handles like the real thing. The venue and the couple get the look without the venue spending the last hour of the evening on their hands and knees with a torch.
It is worth being specific about the count, because acrylic barware is usually ordered short. Champagne is poured for a toast, which means almost every guest holds one within the same ten minutes; unlike wine glasses, they do not cycle through a wash and come back. The number you need is the number of people in the room.
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Four umbrellas and a Florida afternoon
Four white umbrellas covered the exposed stretch of deck. That sounds like a small line on an order and it is the difference between guests staying outside and guests drifting indoors to find shade.
A March afternoon in Tampa is warm rather than punishing, but there is nothing between the Bay Club deck and the sun. Older guests feel it first, and once a few people move inside the outdoor space starts to look empty in photographs, which is the opposite of what a waterfront venue is for.
Placement is the whole skill with them. Four is not many, so they go where guests actually stand still — the bar queue, the seating nearest the water, the stretch of deck people cross between ceremony and dinner — rather than spaced evenly for symmetry.
Umbrellas do this without building anything. A tent would have closed off the view the couple chose the venue for; four umbrellas take the edge off the heat while leaving the marina, the boats and the sky exactly where they are.
Planning a waterfront reception?
Dance floors, shade and barware come from one order across Tampa Bay, specified for the surface and the weather you are actually working with.
Wedding Credits
Venue: Westshore Yacht Club – Bay Club · Photography: Calista Manfre Photography · Videography: The Nice Times Media · Planning: Helena Elizabeth Events · Rentals: Gabro Event Services · Originally featured on Marry Me Tampa Bay.
