Corporate Christmas parties at offices and hired venues require a different approach to hire than a private celebration. Lead times, delivery logistics, and catering requirements all sit differently in a corporate context.
Corporate Christmas parties at offices and hired venues require a different approach to hire than a private celebration. Lead times, delivery logistics, and catering requirements all sit differently in a corporate context.
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Corporate Christmas parties need tighter planning than most private celebrations. Office access rules, venue loading windows, outside caterers, branded styling and late guest-list changes all sit on top of the usual party decisions about tables, chairs and glassware. December is also one of the busiest periods for event hire, so the order that would feel simple in summer can become difficult if it goes in too late. If you break the job into format, quantities and access, the whole order becomes much easier to control.
December attracts heavy demand for furniture, linen, glassware and service equipment. If your party date sits close to the Christmas break, do not leave the order until the last moment. October and November are strong booking windows for December events because the most requested items, especially round tables, wedding and banqueting chairs, linen and bar furniture, often get reserved first by larger corporate clients. Early booking also gives you more delivery-slot choice, which matters when the venue restricts access or the event has a narrow setup window.
The equipment list changes fast depending on whether you are hosting a sit-down dinner, a buffet, a canapé reception or a hybrid format. A seated dinner needs a complete table plan, place settings and enough service equipment for multiple courses. A standing party leans harder on poseur tables, lounge pieces, glassware turnover and bar support. Many office parties land somewhere in the middle, with arrival drinks, a short speech section and a buffet or bowl-food service after that. Decide how guests will eat and where they will spend most of the evening before you start counting tables and glasses.
For a sit-down dinner with 60 guests, the original guide's base list is still sound: 6 to 8 round tables, 66 chairs, tablecloths, napkins, crockery for each course and wine and water glasses. Expo Hire's round tables for hire are available in sizes suited to common corporate layouts, so the best choice depends on whether you want more space per guest or a tighter footprint. A buffet format reduces the number of fully laid places but adds pressure on the service area, because guests need somewhere to queue, somewhere to set drinks down and enough room to circulate without blocking the bar or entrance.
White or ivory linen remains the common choice for corporate Christmas dinners because it looks clean under low light and suits most branding schemes. Some companies add coloured napkins to bring the brand palette into the room without covering every table in printed materials. The existing planning rule works well here: order one tablecloth per table plus three spares, and one napkin per person plus 10%. For 60 guests at seven tables, that gives seven cloths plus three spares and 66 napkins. Expo Hire's linen hire range covers the standard combinations used for this kind of event.
Glassware numbers often catch corporate planners out because the event tends to have more than one stage. A seated dinner may need wine, water and champagne flutes at each place. A pre-dinner reception needs flutes or wine glasses in circulation before guests even sit down. A simple base set per guest for dinner is one wine glass, one champagne flute and one water glass. For 60 guests, that is 180 pieces before you add any buffer, which is why the original guide rounds to about 200 glasses.
If the party includes arrival drinks, do not assume the dinner glasses can cover that stage unless the venue is washing and resetting them fast. Expo Hire's glassware hire range makes it easier to build the reception and dinner counts together rather than discovering halfway through planning that one part of the night has borrowed from the other.
Many corporate Christmas parties rely on outside caterers, particularly when the event takes place in an office or a dry-hire venue. That changes the equipment list because the caterer may expect the hire company to provide hot holding units, prep tables, service trays and other front-of-house support items. The original guide's example for a three-course dinner for 60 guests, two to three hot holding units, a prep table and serving trays, is a useful starting point. Expo Hire's catering equipment hire range covers the common service pieces, but the exact list should come from the caterer once the menu is fixed.
Corporate parties often work best when guests have somewhere to stand besides the main dining space. Poseur tables, lounge furniture or a clear bar zone help break the room up and stop everyone collecting around one service point. If there is a drinks reception before dinner, build that in from the start rather than treating it as a separate mini event. A few well-placed tables can make the room feel more relaxed and give guests somewhere to set down a glass during speeches or introductions.
Office buildings and conference centres usually come with rules that private venues do not. Goods lifts may have size limits. Security may need vehicle details in advance. Deliveries may have to happen through a side entrance at a fixed time, with everything offloaded quickly. Some sites only allow access once staff have gone home, which compresses the setup window. Give Expo Hire the full access information when you place the order, including the contact on site, any floor restrictions and the timing of the loading bay. Those details save far more trouble than a last-minute reshuffle on delivery day.
Collection matters as much as delivery. The party may finish late, the venue may want the room cleared early the next morning or the office may reopen while the collection still needs to happen. Decide in advance whether goods can stay overnight, whether caterers are clearing glassware before pickup and whether lifts or loading bays are available at the collection time. When that plan is clear, the return side of the hire becomes routine instead of another problem for the organiser to solve at the end of the night.
For a corporate sit-down Christmas dinner for 80 guests, the existing working list remains practical:
Your venue and caterer may shift those numbers, but this gives you a solid base for the first version of the order.
See also: black tie dinner hire guide and gala dinner hire guide.
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