Best Party & Event Hire in Oak Flats
18 Oct 2026
Oak Flats does celebrations its own way. It's a suburb where the party is just as likely to happen in a backyard with the esky open and a trestle table pushed up against the fence as it is in a hired hall, and where half the guest list has known the birthday kid since preschool. Being tucked in behind Lake Illawarra means there's no shortage of green space and foreshore for a picnic-style gathering either, which is lovely right up until the moment you realise you've got forty people coming and nothing to make the space look like an actual event.
That's where party and event hire earns its keep. It's the category nobody thinks about until about three weeks out, and then suddenly it's the only thing standing between a folding table in a garage and something that genuinely feels like an occasion. In a suburb this size, you're not drowning in options — but you don't need to be. You need one outfit that answers the phone, turns up when they say they will, and makes the room look like someone cared.
In Oak Flats, that outfit is iCANDY Balloons & Party. The brief they set themselves is a good one: energise your event with custom balloon creations and create wonderful memories, and by their own account they simply love to spread joy with balloons. That's not nothing. Balloons are the fastest, most cost-effective way to transform a space — a bare hall, a carport, a function room with beige walls — and the difference between a few supermarket bunches taped to a chair and a properly designed installation is the difference between a gathering and an event.
What they offer covers most of what a local celebration actually needs. There are arches, which are the workhorse of any party photo — the thing everyone ends up standing in front of whether you planned it that way or not. There are shimmer backdrops, which do a similar job and photograph beautifully under a phone flash, and neon numbers for the milestones that deserve to be announced in metre-high figures. Table and floor bouquets handle the in-between spaces, the bits of a room that otherwise look a little empty once the food's been cleared. There are columns for framing entrances and stages, personalised balloons for when you want a name or a message in the mix, and gift boxes for when the balloons themselves are the present rather than the decoration.
That last one is worth flagging, because it solves a specific problem Oak Flats locals will recognise: the milestone you want to mark for someone who isn't having a party at all. A gift box of balloons arriving at the front door on a 70th or a graduation day does more emotional work than most wrapped presents, and it's the sort of thing you can organise without needing to book a venue or wrangle a guest list.
The delivery range is genuinely useful too — iCANDY Balloons & Party deliver from Bulli down to Gerroa, which takes in the whole stretch of the Illawarra most of us actually live and celebrate across. If your family's spread between Oak Flats, Shellharbour, Albion Park and Kiama, as plenty of local families are, that range means one supplier can handle the christening at one end of the coast and the 21st at the other. It also means you're not paying city rates or waiting on someone to make the trip down the highway.
A few practical notes if you're planning ahead. Balloon work is custom work, so the earlier you get in touch the more room there is to talk through colours, sizes and how a piece will fit the space you've actually got. Measure your ceiling height before you fall in love with a column. Think about where people will take photos, because that's where the arch or backdrop belongs. And if your event is outdoors on the lake foreshore or in a backyard, flag that early — wind and sun are real considerations, and the people who do this every weekend will know how to plan around them.
Party hire isn't a category you shop around in forever. You want one name you trust, saved in your phone, ready for the next birthday that sneaks up on you. In Oak Flats, iCANDY Balloons & Party is that name — worth knowing well before you need it.
Featured in this guide
Is one of these businesses yours? Click through above and look for the claim this listing banner — it's free, and it puts you in front of locals searching for exactly what you do. Explore more of the Illawarra's best local businesses at Illawarra's Best.
— The Illawarra's Best Team