You know the kind of call that feels ordinary until you realize it's about to take over your next six weeks. That was Sammy’s call.
Sammy had just opened a nail salon. It sat in a prime location, foot traffic and all.
So Sammy came to us with a bit of a challenge he had wrapped inside a deadline: launch a grand opening in time for Valentine's Day, and don't just decorate the space. I want it to feel like a moment. Something people would want to film. Something they'd want to be seen in. A space that would live and breathe love-season energy for an entire month.
The Ask Behind the Ask
What made this project different from a typical install wasn't just the decor, it was everything wrapped around it. Sammy didn't just want a pretty room. He wanted a statement. We found ourselves doing far more than our usual planning-and-design lane: sitting in on conversations with his social media management team, helping shape the marketing push around the launch, even curating the merch bags every guest would walk away with. This wasn't decorating a room. This was building a brand for Sammy.
Reading the Walls Before Touching Them
Here's the part people don't think about when they see a beautifully draped ceiling or a wall dripping in florals: someone had to figure out, first, whether that wall could even hold it.
This wasn't a ballroom or an event space built for installs, it was a working salon, with real plumbing, real electrical, real structure that had never been designed with drapery in mind. So before a single flower went up, our creative director,Christine, made trip after trip to the salon; five, six visits in total, armed with a tape measure and a mental map. She was slowly building every wall, every beam, every inch of moulding in the building.
Which walls could take a drill. Which ones hid a pipe that would turn one wrong hole into a flood. Which trim was structural, and which was purely decorative pretty, but never meant to bear weight.
To get it right, we brought in a specialist: Alejandro, who lives and breathes wood and metal structures. He walked the space, called out exactly which walls were safe to anchor into, and flagged the moulding that looked sturdy but wasn't going to hold a single drape without peeling off the wall within days.
The Overnight Build
Once the plan was locked, the real transformation began, and it happened almost entirely in the dark.
The salon closed at 7pm and reopened at 9am, which meant our only window to build a Valentine's Day dream was overnight. For three nights straight, the team moved in after close and worked until the space was unrecognizable.
Two-by-one wood slats got drilled directly into the safe points in the wall: sturdy anchors strong enough to hold drapery, but never touching the fragile decorative moulding that would have collapsed under the weight within days. From those slats, the drapes were hung, transforming plain salon walls into something soft and romantic.
Around the pillars, it was a different technique altogether: command hooks holding up pool noodles, wrapped and dressed until they became the base structure for cascades of florals. Nothing permanent. Nothing that would damage a space that belonged to someone else's business, but everything strong enough to carry the weight of a full-blown transformation for the month ahead.
A Salon That Still Had to Be a Salon
The trickiest puzzle of all didn't happen overnight, it happened on launch day itself, in daylight, with real clients walking in the door.
This wasn't an empty venue rented out for a party. It was a functioning nail salon that still needed to serve actual customers, and Sammy wanted it that way. A grand-opening discount promo meant guests could come get their nails done and be part of the celebration. So the team had to solve a spatial puzzle in real time: how do you fit a bar, cocktail tables, a saxophonist, a photographer, a videographer, and a crowd of guests into a room that also needs to keep its pedicure and manicure stations running?
The answer was a careful trade-off. About five of the salon's service stations were moved to the back to free up the floor, replaced with four cocktail tables and two chairs, each just enough room for people to mingle, sip, and watch the space glow, without losing the ability to offer the service that brought them there in the first place.
Opening Night
By the time doors opened, the room had a full cast behind it: a day-of coordinator keeping the flow moving, a photographer and videographer capturing every corner, a bartender pouring, and a saxophonist filling the space with live music. Guests got their nails done under string lights and drapery that hadn't existed seventy-two hours earlier. They took photos in front of floral-wrapped pillars built from pool noodles and command hooks. They walked out with curated merch bags. And most importantly, they posted about it.
What started as a request to "help boost social media presence" became something bigger: proof that a grand opening isn't just a party, it's an engineering problem, a design challenge, and a love letter to a brand, all built overnight, one carefully drilled wall slat at a time.
You can check out the reel from the event,here on instagram
Coco Cabana Events — planning, design, and decor for the moments worth building overnight.