If President Trump knew about Tim and Courtney Garneau’s tents, he could have saved himself the trouble, expense, and political capital of demolishing the East Wing of the White House to build a ballroom.
That’s because the Garneau family raises large, hand-crafted, bespoke, ultra-luxury tents, more Great British Baking Show, less L.L. Bean.
Their company, Bohemia Canvas North America, keeps Mr. Garneau (also an East Hampton Town trustee who previously wholesaled evening wear for 25 years along Seventh Avenue in New York City), and his kin busy as they create a cult brand based around a “seemingly invincible aura of prestige.”
Most installations cost over $200,000.
The parent company, located in the United Kingdom, provided the tents for the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in 2018.
In fact, most of the time the tents are used for weddings. However, they have been used at fashion runway shows and Formula 1 hospitality suites, and the company even lists the Rolling Stones as a client.
The Garneaus started the stateside arm of the company in 2020, during the height of the Covid pandemic.
“We brought the tents over and started booking events and then everything was canceled,” Mr. Garneau said.
The tents came from Europe. Mr. Garneau had been friends with the owners of Bohemia Canvas — John Preston, Graham Cresswell, and Charlie Preston — going back to his college days. They had become family friends.
“These guys are all connected with the Royals. I always said to them, if you ever want a partner to open a North American branch, I’d be interested. It took six years before they took me seriously,” he said.
Company literature extols the architectural history of the tents. “Inspired by the yurts of Central Asia, Maharaja Palaces of Rajasthan, and 17th-century Palladian architecture of Europe — tent design is a wonderful way to celebrate art and architecture,” it reads.
Serving the ultra-elite means Mr. Garneau often travels to their hot spots.
Recent events were in Montecito, Calif. (a nearly $400,000 job), in Maine (a “tiki hut”), Aspen, and Jackson Hole. The East End has its own share of 1-percenters, however, so he has erected tents at the Sagaponack Distillery, Deep Hollow Ranch in Montauk, and at scattered estates across the East End.
“There’s not a lot of places to get married out here if you don’t have an estate,” he said.
His main tent is a 12-sided “do-decahedral” shape named the Mayflower that can fit 300 seated.
“Constructed from soaring ‘whale rib’ timbers and reminiscent of great Victorian glasshouses, the Mayflower celebrates a variety of iconic architectural styles, in a range of shapes and sizes,” reads the company literature. A cotton canvas awning, sort of like a gigantic skirt, can be extended from the main structure, almost doubling its capacity and providing an indoor-outdoor space around the perimeter of the party.
The tents are modular and can be constructed in six different styles serving anywhere from 80 to 460 seated people. Smaller, ancillary tents, perhaps for an afterparty or separate cocktail area, are also available.
“It takes three to four days to put up most tents,” said Mr. Garneau, whose three children (Burton, Henry, and Lola) also work for the company. “A subfloor acts as ballast for the bigger tents. My daughter Lola was the forewoman for the build on the floor of a tent we raised in October. It’s all puzzle pieces. That’s why it’s expensive. It takes a long time to put them together, ship them, and then maintain a 14-person team on site for two weeks.”
Bohemia Canvas’s tents are stored at a local farm in trailers. When it’s time for an event, they are driven by truck to the location. “We use three 53-foot flatbeds to travel across the country. Once we arrive, we drop the containers at a storage place, decant them, and put the pieces onto box trucks,” he said.
Each tent is entirely different from the last, not only because each location offers unique challenges — there can be steep elevation changes (“We had to work with a six-foot drop at our Montecito event”) or trees that require holes to be punched through the top of the tent — but also because the interior of the tent is completely customizable. This also adds to the cost.
There are all kinds of curiosities: flowers everywhere, wall and ceiling linings that are hand-printed in Jaipur, India. Each season they introduce new interior lining designs, “with subjects ranging from nature to historical Georgian wall papers,” according to the literature.
During the pandemic, they designed a cupola with a lantern for the top of the tent, which resembles an upside-down cockpit of a zeppelin. “In Aspen we wrapped a 13-foot awning round our big tent and fit a 30-piece band, and several bars inside. It was about 8,000 square feet.”
“We’re on call during events,” he said. The team can take the walls of the tent up or down in a matter of minutes, and the tents are completely climate-controlled inside.
Even so, one time a client asked to place a wood-burning stove in the tent. “They can do that in England, but we can’t do it here. The cook tent has to be separate. In the U.K. and Ireland, it’s the Wild West. They can do anything, there’s no permitting, no fire marshal. Here, some of my folders for permits are an inch and a half thick.”
But that’s the back-office stuff.
In the end, Bohemia Canvas North America wants to focus on the tent’s role in important events. “It is a celebratory art form and opportunity for expression,” reads the literature. “A blank canvas on which to paint your story.”
