ILA organized on June 25, a great WHITE PARTY in Montpellier, South of france for its French language students.
The ILA WHITE PARTY is inspired from the famous White dinner organized at first in Paris, and lately in various cities worldwide.
What is “Dîner en blanc” ?
Dîner en Blanc or The White Party is an invite-only secret dinner party that descends upon a different and very public location each year : The Arc de Triomphe, Concorde, The Invalides, Notre Dame cathedral, the Carrousel du Louvre and the Palais Royal 2 weeks ago…
Guests invited to this fine dining experience must only wear white, bring chairs, foldable tables adorned with table cloths, proper crockery (plastic is forbidden) and flowers – all in white of course.
Men and women sit on opposite sides of the table to one another and guests are forbidden to sit down until their entire row have set up their table.
They must only drink wine and champagne and must leave before midnight as discreetly they arrived, taking all their rubbish with them to leave no trace of the event.
Where does “Dîner en blanc” take place ?
The location is so secret in fact, that even those connected to the organizers do not know the location. Once the organizer (your “rallyer”) informs you about the meeting point, only a couple of hours before the event, one can see amazing scenes across Paris : men and women dressed all in white with fancy accoutrements, carrying picnic tables and chairs and flowed into meeting points in mass, creating traffic jams.
At this stage you still do not know where the spot exactly is, but everyone makes bets at guessing.
Then your “rallyer” will ask you to follow him and bring you to THE spot at the exact space reserved for him and his guests.
This year particularly was great fun with live bands everywhere and people dancing on statues, in the gardens of the Palais Royal. Sparklers were lit in conjunction with the 11pm Eiffel Tower lighting.
How did it start ?
The Dîner en Blanc was started by a man named François Pasquier, who invited a few friends to the Bois de Boulogne one day in June. To find each other in the park, they all wore white. The dinner was such a success that they decided the next year, each person would invite some other friends and the event grew organically into the 10000+ dinner it is today.
A worldwide event
Since then the event has gone global with versions of the dinner taking place in European cities such as Milan, London or Barcelona and much further afield in more than a dozen locations in the U.S., Canada, Singapore and even Rwanda and the Ivory Coast.