Orion Entertainment had the honor of hosting and helping plan the 20th annual Emerald City Applause Awards. While the event itself was one for the books, we were fortunate enough to be named “Best Event Music”, and receive the incredible honor of being named “Event Professional of The Year”. The ECAA’s as they are known, are the flagship annual event for ILEA Seattle, the International Live Events Association. Every year, event professionals are recognized in a variety of categories for their contributions to the events they planned or were a part of executing.
Orion Entertainment provided a total of 4 DJs for the event, and were also honored to act as the host of the event MCing for the second consecutive year. This event is a labor of love, and all the vendors’ contributions are volunteered by the sponsors. A truly magnificent display of what can happen when the best of Seattle’s events community comes together.
Best Event Music:
The first DJ company to ever receive the honor, we were named Best Event Music for the OR10N 10 year celebration. The honor felt even more significant, as this was the first time we have ever won an applause award for an event we planned ourselves. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our incredible sponsors, who helped make the OR10N 10 Year Celebration an award winning success.
Thank you to The 101, for hosting our event and being long time vendor partners. Thank you to our team for their help with set up and for being the motivating force for us to continue this dream. Thank you to our photographer Taylor Ochoa for capturing this day so beautifully, A huge thank you to Blue Ink for making our branding dreams a reality. Thank you to Seattle Marquee Lighting for illuminating our name, Thank you to Smash Baby Smash for always blowing us away with your balloon wizardry, to Flora Grand for bringing natural life into our events, Cort Party Rental and Jana Heinrichs for giving our guests a place to rest, and our performers a stage to play on. Party on the Rocks for bringing the party – per usual, Dingfelders Delicatessen for making sure no one left hungry, The Embassy Suites Pioneer Square for treating us like kings, and the Coco Show Pod for letting us relive this event forever.
Finally, we could not have won Best Music without our incredible lineup of DJs that evening. Thank you to DJ Lightning for showing the world that a cocktail hour is really a dance party, and to Trentino for giving us an evening that will echo in time. Thank you all for your contributions to our award winning event, and thank you ILEA Seattle for this incredible honor.
Event Professional Of The Year:
Every category of the ECAAs is awarded to either a company or an event planner. However, the final award of the night is awarded to the individual who has demonstrated a commitment to ILEA, and embodies its values through volunteerism, industry leadership, and innovation. This is the only award that is voted on by the Seattle events community, where the others are actually judged by a panel in a different state that scores each submission individually. This honor caught us completely by surprise, and was a very emotional moment for the entire team. David, the owner of Orion Entertainment was named Event Professional of the Year for his many hours of volunteer work for ILEA Seattle as the VP of Communications, the many hours of DJ/MC and Photo booth services donated to industry events, and for his role as a leader in Seattle’s events community.
