A pop-up, picnic-style party is coming back to Wilmington this year.
Wilmington's version of Diner en Blanc was canceled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The event was started locally in 2018 by business owners Sherell and Michael Flagg.
“It’s actually a French-themed event; it’s a pop-up picnic," said Michael Flagg. "My owner and founder Francois Pasquier, he actually had a birthday party in Paris - in a park - and he wanted it to be pretty exclusive. So he wanted to make everybody dress the same; so they all wore white.”
Versions are held on six continents, bringing diners dressed in white to a temporary setup in a public space, using their own food, tables, chairs and tablecloths.
Sherell Flagg says the theme this year is the Roaring Twenties.
“I’m definitely going to try my best to fit the theme and do it some justice," saif Flagg. "So after the Spanish flu pandemic...came the Roaring Twenties. And we just think that it was necessary to follow that theme this year because dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, it just fit so well.”
Diner en Blanc is set for Saturday, September 25, 2021. The location for the event will remain a mystery until right before the event, although Michael Flagg says, "it will be somewhere in the City."
There is already a waiting list for the invite-only ticketed event, but they are still accepting names for the wait list at the event's website.
Michael Flagg says the inaugural event in Wilmington in 2018 attracted about 1,100 people and it drew more than 2,000 in 2019. Right now, 5,000 names are on a waiting list for this year's event.
