When Philip Sammut heard about the help the Chateau Briand catering hall was giving Long Beach High School students for their senior prom, he said he wanted to do his part.
So Sammut, president of Pedestals Floral Decorators in Garden City Park, decided not only to donate the decorations for the event but the help organize the event.
“When we found out [Chateau Briand owners Victor and Anthony Scotto] were going to host this prom, we wanted to put a smile on these kids’ faces,” Sammut said. “We want to give them the ‘wow’ factor
Pedestals is collaborating on planning the prom theme with a 13-member prom committee of girls from Long Beach High, according to Nicole Versaggi, Pedestals’ director of business development.
Versaggi said the students are deciding between a theme of Paris or an underwater seascape.
“If they want Paris, they’ll see Paris. If they want underwater, they’ll be underwater,” she said.
Chateau Briand sales manager Victoria Scotto said her family reached out to Sammut after the catering facility agreed to host the prom for Long Beach High School for free.
The offer was made, Scott said, after the Long Beach High prom faculty advisor advised her that Long Beach students were finding it difficult to come up with the money to attend this year’s event in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, and they might have to cancel.
Scotto said Sammut, who frequently decorates events held at the Carle Place catering facility, immediately agreed to decorate the prom with pizzazz and at no cost.
Versaggi said Pedestals will go step-by-step with the Long Beach girls, choosing the colors for the decor and giving them a primer on decorating in their offices at 125 Herricks Road in Garden City Park. Sammut said the decorating will go well beyond centerpieces and the Long Beach kids will have “free rein” to select decorations and atmospheric lighting for the catering hall.
His objective, he said, is to turn a negative into a positive for the young people who lived through the destruction and stress of Hurricane Sandy.
“We’re going to create an environment,” Sammut said. “They should have all the bells and whistles they can have. For all the tragedy they saw, we want to give them happy thoughts,”
Donating decor for the prom isn’t the first good turn Pedestals has done in response to the hurricane.
Many weddings Pedestals had been commissioned to decorate were postponed in Sandy’s wake.
In each case, Sammut said, they replaced the perishable flowers when the nuptials were rescheduled at no additional cost, Sammut said. Pedestals also helped with clothing drives local churches conducted for hurricane victims by making its trucks available to cart clothing to locations in Long Beach and Breezy Point.
“You’ve always got give back,” Sammut said.
Scotto said Chateau Briand is also enlisting help from local retailers to hold a prom-dress donation party on April 18. All the senior girls from Long Beach High are being bused to select dresses for free.
“It’s been a very rewarding experience. We could never imagine them not having their prom,” Scotto said.
