The towns on the regular list
Richmond
The county seat and home base. Courthouse square, church halls, Southview Park and the school calendar that sets the pace for everything else.
Lawson
Up on the Clay and Ray line, with Watkins Mill just outside town. The second largest town in the county and a steady source of school and shower bookings.
Orrick
Southwest in the river bottoms, where Route 210 comes through from Kansas City. Small school, big gym, and a hall that hosts most of what happens in town.
Hardin
East on Route 10 through the farmland. Hardin-Central covers the schools, and the community and church rooms do the rest.
Henrietta
A few minutes southeast of Richmond and inside the Richmond school district. Small enough that a party is usually at somebody's house.
Camden and Rayville
Camden sits down on the old river bend, Rayville up to the northwest. Both under two hundred people, both an easy drive, both perfectly normal bookings.
Fleming, Wood Heights, Crystal Lakes, Elmira, Excelsior Estates, Homestead and every farm and county road between them are on the same list. If you have a Ray County address, you are in range.
The two rooms that do most of the work
Outside Richmond, county parties happen in one of two places, and they are opposite problems.
Church fellowship halls and community rooms are the first. Almost every one of them has a rule about the walls, usually because the walls are original and somebody has already spent a weekend patching tape damage. That rule does not limit the design at all. Weighted columns stand on their own, arches get built on frames, and removable hooks handle the rest. Get the policy in writing when you reserve the room and send it along.
School gyms are the second, and the trouble there is scale. A garland sized for a living room disappears in a gym. Ceiling height, floor width and the distance guests stand back all push the design bigger than it looks like it needs to be on paper. Tell us the room and we will size it up rather than let it get lost.
Small town, small booking, still worth doing
There is no minimum here and no surcharge for a rural address. Cost tracks the size of the piece, the number of balloons and the install time. It does not track the population of the town it goes in.
That is partly principle and mostly geography. When the drive is fifteen minutes, one garland behind a dessert table in a church basement is a perfectly sensible job. The same booking two counties away would not be, and that is the honest difference between a local balloon artist and a metro one who will quote you anything.
How the county connects
Three roads do all the work, and they all meet near Richmond. Route 10 runs east to west, from Excelsior Springs through Richmond and Hardin and on toward Carrollton. Route 13 runs north to south, dropping down to the Missouri River and crossing at Lexington. Route 210 comes up from Kansas City through Orrick and ends at Route 10 just southwest of town.
Practically, that means an install anywhere in the county is a straight run rather than a maze of county roads. It also means a repair trip is realistic on the same day, which is not something that can be promised on a booking an hour out.
Ray County questions
Which Ray County towns do you serve?
All of them. Richmond, Henrietta, Hardin, Lawson, Orrick, Camden, Rayville, Fleming, Wood Heights, Crystal Lakes and the farms and county roads in between. Nothing in Ray County is more than about half an hour from home, so there is no town here that counts as a long drive.
Is there a minimum for a small town booking?
No, and the small bookings are a good share of the work. A single garland behind a dessert table in a church basement in Hardin is a normal job. Cost tracks the size of the piece and the install time rather than the size of the town it goes in.
Can you set up in a church hall or a school gym?
Yes, and those two rooms are most of the county's party space. Both usually forbid anything attached to the walls, which is exactly what weighted columns and frame-built arches solve. Gyms also tend to have very high ceilings, so pieces get built taller than they would in a house or the design gets lost in the room.
Do you cover the county line towns?
Yes. Lawson straddles the Clay and Ray line, Excelsior Springs straddles Clay and Ray, and Lexington sits across the river in Lafayette County. All three are inside the routine range, and county lines have never had any effect on where a van can drive.
Just past the county line
The hour does not stop at the border. Lexington and Lafayette County sit across the river to the south, Excelsior Springs straddles the Clay and Ray line to the west, and the metro towns of Liberty, Gladstone and North Kansas City are all regular bookings. The full service area page has the rest.