By Julie Arosteguy, Made in the Shade Schedule & Contracts Coordinator

As a receptionist, I have started to notice a lot of patterns in the types of calls we receive at Made in the Shade. Most commonly, we get people asking us, “Can you

just give me a ballpark figure?” Believe me, if quoting a job was as simple as that, I would be all over it (probably like Oprah, “you get a quote! You get a quote!”) However, quoting is a complicated process that can be influenced significantly by any number of variables and typically takes a few days.

Made in the Shade offers a wide variety of tents, in shape and in size. Once you figure out what size and shape of tent your event should have, you need to make sure your tent won’t fall over and hurt someone—which is where ballasting comes in. Ballasting is weighing the legs of the tent down. Made in the Shade has a formula we have adopted to find the amount of weight each leg needs— using variables like wind, tent height, number of legs, etc. You can secure your tent by staking, using cement blocks, or anchoring into concrete—all of which have pros and cons, which are laid out in an earlier blog post.

Once the tent is secured to the ground, it’s time to think about accessories. Do you want your tent to have any walls? How about lights? Will you need a fire permit? If your event is in the evening or later in the year, should you rent a heater? Made in the Shade offers a wide range of accessories to make sure that your tent is up to your specifications and makes a big impact on your guests.

We want to make sure that your quote is as accurate as possible from the beginning—we’re not trying to surprise you with hidden costs or charges. Considering the multiple rental options and accessories, logistical and circumstantial variables revolving around delivery, accessibility and pick up, each quote takes time to price out.

We recognize that quotes are subject to change, and that not all charges will remain the same all the way through the entire rental process, but we take pride in the fact that we are able to deliver detailed, relevant quotes from the very start.