But what we do have is a whole gang of happy customers - we’re exhausted but they have a smiles on their faces.  

Two big weddings with a total of nearly four hundred people plus a 21st an 18th and a 16th all on one weekend!

And if that wasn’t enough on the Monday we had a call from Italy for a last minute birthday picnic for a Hollywood director.

Blue is his favourite colour so we ran a 150 ft long blue entryway down through the 

garden to a blue yurt.

Then they all flew in from LA and as they walked down the carpet they stopped to wave at the imaginary papparazzi… fantastic!

Now that’s what we call style!

As the summer gathers pace and we take our first Christmas booking (yes!), we’re just about to see the arrival of two new tents.  

First is the long-awaited 26ft yurt with red woodwork which is just stunning.

We’ve always liked the red interiors as they create such a fantastic atmosphere - and with room for 70 people to sit down to dinner or stand up to dance this yurt will fit a space in the slightly-larger-party slot. 

Second is another of our Mongolian Marquees - the stretched limo of the yurt world.   At 33ft long, it’s smaller than our 45 footer but it still carries over 500 sq ft of space and is every bit as impressive, every bit as cool and - dare I say it - every bit as bling as it’s bigger brother.

Lots of pics to come.  Just as soon as we have a chance to put them up!!

Last week we lost out to a square marquee - can’t imagine why !!

But this week we evened the score with a fabulous funky vestibule for a North London student festival. So it more than made up for it.

Plus, it provides a great opportunity to bring out our new range of coloured banners all inspired by a set of flags from a Californian baton twirling troupe.

Now there’s inspiration for you!!

Thanks girls.

She’s a conceptual artist with very particular views of what

a 50th birthday party in a yurt should be about.

The result - a three day collaboration to explore the potential of space, the concept of permanence and the nature of shelter.

The centrepiece was one of our 22ft yurts - part-exhibit, part-installation, part-party location!  It was positioned inside a square barn to provide a shelter within a shelter and so “create a meaningful dialogue and a real sense of tension between all the elements” - or so she told us!

The interesting thing was the effect of all the bits and pieces she had painted to match and then hidden around the barn.  Once spotted you had to wonder what they might be for - and what else there could be…

Then suddenly you realised what she was on about!! 

Fantastic- we loved it!

52 guests at a 50th in Sussex. All seated round the one table.

Enormously cosy and hugely fun - I am told.

One Yurt - One Table - A lot of love.

(apologies to Bob Marley)

(and the Hitchhikers Guide)

It was used as a cinema, a bar, a lecture room and a performance venue!

Who said yurts weren’t versatile?

But the best thing about it was the students, who threw themselves into the building of the yurts with huge amounts of enthusiasm and good humour - that and the singing practice next door and the spontaneous appearance of a brass band across the courtyard.  

A great day!

100 seems to be the magic number for most large family events like weddings, anniversaries and 50th birthdays.  And this month we have more requests than ever for events of that size.

So, finally, we have given in.

But we are not just getting bigger yurts, nor a rackety old 6-bay multi yurt, nor a draughty great pavillion  - they are too tall, too empty and too lacking in atmosphere.

No, we’ve come up with this. 

It’s a long yurt, a 2-in-1 yurt, a super yurt, a kind of stretched limo of a yurt.  

The kind of yurt you would drive in to a film premiere! We’re calling it the Mongolian Marquee…

With just under 100m2 of space it will seat a hundred people with room to spare and, if you still need another 50 or 60 people, it can be connected to our new 28ft yurt to form a T shape.

So there you have it - still a yurt - just longer.

I’m not sure what our friends in Ulanbataar will think of it - although I’m sure they will tell us!

Well we decided to see if the fact that we ship them over from here, deep in the heart of planet Yurt, makes them - well - less green!!

So here’s the ship they come in all the way from Outer Mongolia.  It burns an astonishing forty tonnes of fuel a day !! Sounds a lot…

But, amazingly, once you boil it all down and it’s roughly equivalent to driving them down from Scotland in a transit van.

It’s not perfect but not too bad we think!

So we thought as a bit of an homage to the late great Mr Rothko that we would commission four works of y-art to hang in our y-urts.

And here they are - they arrived today.  And they’re very good too!

So if you fancy a slightly more avant garde setting for your yurt event then how much better can it get?

And if, mid-party, you feel a spontaneous urge to start bidding - well… I’m sure we wouldn’t insist on the full 73 mill…

It was his 40th on Saturday which we all celebrated over chocolate cake and wine as we finished setting up his big party on Friday night.

“How did it go?” I said.

He paused.

I hate that.

“Jonny ” he said at last “I honestly can’t think of a better evening in my entire life!”

Wow!

“When I opened the curtains everyone just gasped - it was perfect. Then we went in to dinner and they gasped again.   The yurt was absolute perfection, I can’t tell you how wonderful it was.  Then we went into the second tent and you’d done it again.  Everyone went silent for a few seconds and then the air was filled with oohs and aahs.  It was incredible.  Everyone will remember it for a very long time and I bless the day I found your website !”

It wasn’t always completely straightforward - these things never can be.  40th birthdays are emotional events.  But it was really nice to see the benefit of an extremely close collaboration and a lot of detailed planning.

George was a good client, not because he paid us and told us to get on with it.  Quite the opposite - because he got involved, because he conjured up in his head an idea of how the evening might go and because he held onto his vision for a ‘Perfect 40th’.

That makes him not just a good client but a patron.  So, good for you George! and happy 40th.

As for us - well - in those immortal words; ‘we love it when a plan comes together!’