Thinking of you
I have been so swamped this last month, but you have been in my thoughts. Honest, you have!
I have been stretched so thin lately. A year ago this day, I began planning my 20 year High School Reunion with 3 other people (which grew to5, then down to 4 people). It has been a tough challenging road, that is for sure.
I thought it would get easier near the end. No, no the beginning is waaaaaay better than the end. So many times near the end, I actually thought I might be physically sick due to the stress.
We had over 700 students in our graduating glass, so we found a very nice venue and guaranteed payment for 100 people minimum (i.e. $4,000.00). Plus we had to secure a DJ with video screen, order tickets, pay for advertising and so forth. We almost canceled a month ago and would just bite the bullet and absorb about $1,000.00 in cancellation penalties between 4 people. At that point (Sept 2nd) we had only sold 82 tickets and tickets had been on sale since April. We had advertised online, through Facebook, in local papers, major papers, on the radio, at the high school, ….you name it, we pretty much did it.
As of just two weeks ago, we only had 107 tickets sold, so we gave up half of our rented ballroom. Now we can only have approx 150-160 people for a sit down dinner and still have room for a dance floor.
Sales were due to end at midnight on Sep 30th. Guess what…. that is when most people decided they wanted to come.
We are now completely maxed out at 170. we had to turn our final numbers in to the Catering Manager two days ago & I still have people asking for tickets. AHHHH.
If you ever need to do this yourself, I would suggest hiring someone, but then again, you would have no money left over to do the fun things, as that extra money would have to go towards paying the person you hired. We have now been able to rent a photobooth (so cooool) from Photobooth Vancouver, we have tonnes of door prizes and we have been able to order $1,050.00 worth of appetizers (which is crazy, as it actually only amounts to two appetizers per person. Kind of highway robbery in a way, but… what can you do?).
Next week, I dive back into the world of creativity and look forward to loosing myself (ha ha).
Keep smiling & creating!
Nicci
(I will check later for my spelling errors (ha ha))
