Magic that happens in your guests' hands. Not on a stage.
Cocktail hour is the coldest room of any event. A hundred and forty people drinking wine is a different audience every fifteen minutes. Close-up magic, worked table to table and huddle to huddle, is what turns it warm fast.
Check your dateTrusted by
- McCarthy Tétrault
- Teck Resources
- TELUS
- HSBC
- lululemon
- Amazon
- Chanel
- Nintendo
- Mazda
- Huawei
- A&W
- FortisBC
- JW Marriott Parq Vancouver
- Boston Pizza
- Vancouver Aquarium
- Xenon Pharmaceuticals
- Beedie
- Mosaic Homes
- Metrie
- Scanline VFX
- NETCO
- CanSure
- HollisWealth
- Keystone Environmental
- ALS Global
- BC Dairy
- CPHR BC & Yukon
- Blenz Coffee
- Tacofino
150+ five-star Google reviews. PCAM 2026 Gold Medal winner, Comedy Magic.
Impossible things, three inches from their eyes
Close-up magic happens inside a small group, three or four guests at a time, with cards, coins and objects borrowed right off your table. There's no stage, no distance, no watching politely from the back. Everyone in the huddle is part of the trick.
It needs zero setup. No AV, no staging, no green room. I arrive, I start working the room, and your guests do the rest, pulling each other over to see what just happened.
That is the part planners underestimate. A photo booth gives your guests a picture. A DJ gets them dancing. Close-up magic gives them each other, because the person they turn to afterwards is whoever happened to be standing beside them.
What the first hour actually looks like
4:45pm. Doors open, nobody knows anybody
Guests arrive in ones and twos, find the bar, and stand near the people they already came with. Nothing is wrong yet, but the room is quiet and it stays that way unless something changes it.
5:00pm. First huddle forms
I start at the edges, with the people standing alone. Two minutes later there are five of them watching, and two of them have never met.
5:30pm. The room has found its volume
By now the reactions are carrying. People walk over because they heard the noise, not because anyone announced anything. This is the point most events never reach until well after dinner.
6:15pm. Dinner is called into a warm room
Guests sit down already talking. Your speeches land better, your programme runs easier, and nobody is still thawing out through the first course.
Built for the formats you actually run
Cocktail hour
The most underserved window of any event. Guests have just arrived, drinks in hand, doing the stand-near-the-bar routine. That's exactly where close-up magic belongs, and exactly where nobody puts entertainment.
Table to table during dinner
The same close-up work, brought to each table between courses. Every table gets its own moment, so there's no dead spot in the room.
Trade shows and receptions
Close-up magic draws a crowd to a booth or a reception desk without a script or a pitch. People stop because they want to, and they stay because they have to see how it ends.
Client appreciation and networking nights
The hardest room in the world is one where everyone is supposed to be networking. Magic gives strangers a reason to talk to each other that isn't their job title.
“We were absolutely thrilled with Kel's performance at our national conference banquet.”
CHECK
YOUR
DATE / Check your date
Cocktail hour, solved.
Close-up magic during cocktails, then table to table as dinner starts. No patchwork of vendors, no dead air, and it scales from a 20 person reception to a 500 person floor.
Twenty-five years, and the same firms keep calling back
McCarthy Tetrault have booked me five years running. So have RBC, TD Bank, HSBC, TELUS, Teck Resources, Deloitte, Bosa Properties, Lululemon and Xenon Pharma, along with more than twenty law firms across the city.
The awards are nice. PCAM 2026 handed me three golds, including Comedy Magician of the Year. The repeat bookings matter more, because a room full of lawyers is a hard audience and they do not rebook out of politeness.
Venues I already know my way around
Fairmont Pacific Rim. Rosewood Hotel Georgia. The Vancouver Convention Centre. JW Marriott Downtown. Hyatt Regency Burrard. Westin Bayshore. Parq Casino. Stanley Park Pavilion. The Royal Vancouver Yacht Club.
Knowing the room matters more than it sounds. Where the bar sits, where the bottleneck forms, which corner of the floor nobody ever walks into. That is the difference between working a room and wandering through one.
Related pages
Straight answers
For a typical corporate event of 50 to 200 guests, close-up mingling magic alone runs $2,000, covering 1.5 to 2 hours. Corporate events under 50 guests run $1,500. Private events, birthdays, weddings and engagements, run $1,500 to $2,500 regardless of guest count.
The moment someone grabs your arm and says did you see that.