LA Events hosted
their second main event for this year. We were approached by the 2003 ex-head
girl of Durban Academy, Melody Freemantle towards the end of last year as she
wanted us to organise their 10 year reunion.
Of course we were thrilled and immediately began the quoting, and after
our first official meeting we were appointed as the event planners.
A face book page
was created for this event and Melody faced the very daunting task of tracking
down all past students from this year and sending them invites. We created a
digital invite which we emailed out to as many students as possible, and face
book messages, phone calls, smse’s and bbm’s were sent out in their hundreds as
Melody tried to get as many people as possible to attend. The main challenge we
faced was that we did know the final amount of people that would attend the
function. Our quote was based on a total of 80 people, as this was the total
number of positive RSVP’s that were received. We gave everyone a cut-off date
for payment.
We had a fabulous
theme to work with: Viva Las Vegas baby! What an awesome, exciting theme it
was. Lots of glitz and glam, and the main colours were red, black and silver.
Ideas flooded our minds and we could hardly contain our excitement, however we
wisely decided to not start the shopping until monies were received from the
guests, it was a real Vegas case of “show me your money honey!” as you cannot afford
to take a gamble in this industry.
We faced a real
and very disappointing reality when a few weeks prior to the event half of the
students who said they were coming pulled out. This in turn halved our budget
which halved our profit and all our amazing ideas. We had to make the serious
decision as to whether continuing with this event would be worth our while. It
was not only our profit which concerned us, but as a company our reputation was
on the line, the budget we had to work with meant we could not deliver the
service we aimed to deliver on such a large scale event. Since we knew Melody
on a personal level, we agreed to take on the event and offer the best we
could.
A lot of cuts had
to be made due to this new budget, and so we decided to do the catering
ourselves. Normally the night before we would be setting up the décor but this
time around we were playing master chef in my kitchen, preparing the snacks. We
have to mention my mother in law who did us a huge favour by making some of the
snacks for us.
Finally the day arrived,
our adrenaline kicked in and our creativity took over. I believe what makes our
company successful is the fact that Angie and I work so incredibly well as
team. The ability to walk into a teacher’s staff room and transform it into a glamorous
Vegas themed venue fit for a party is what fuels our passion for LA Events. However
the process of this transformation is definitely not half as glamorous and
involved some manual labour as we shifted somewhat thirty heavy chairs and a
few tables out the venue. We arrived with boxes full of décor and worked our
magic. Our basic layout consisted of a dance floor and cocktail tables, (with
fabulous centre pieces) and our focal point being the food table, with food
also served off the bar which we of course glammed up. Most of the décor was
handmade; Angie has an incredible talent of making amazing décor out of
polystyrene. This worked wonders especially for this theme.
Before we knew it
the guests arrived and they all seemed very impressed and surprised with the
end result. We received continuous appraisal on our food (thankfully) and
décor. Angie set up a photo booth with lots of fun props and the guests
thoroughly enjoyed the novelty. Everyone had a great time catching up and all
in all we are proud to announce that even with a lack of funds and students,
the night was a great success.
A special thanks
goes out to our other halves JT and AJ as they did some running around for us
during the week and helped to clear up afterwards. We couldn’t do it without
your support. Especially working from the crack of dawn to well after midnight,
two nights back to back!
We both agreed
that this was a hard lesson learnt, working with such a small budget and having
to deliver such large results, but the reward was standing back and watching
our hard work pay off as the evening went off well. You kind of stop, take a
look and think, “wow, was this really just two girls with a passion that pulled
this off?” and then you know in your heart and soul this was your calling, and
no amount of money can pay off watching your ideas come alive. Yes we were
exhausted, yes we worked harder than what we were paid for, but we are still
small fishes in a massive pond, and one day we will hopefully be singing that
extremely annoying song “started from the bottom now we here..”
We have also
introduced a new exciting service where we hire out a sweet table designed to
fit your desired theme/colour scheme.
Our aim is to keep offering exciting new things in store for our
clients. Please do not hesitate to find out more. You can contact us via email
or our facebook page.
I hope you enjoyed our latest blog, with some awesome
pics taken by Angie (the benefits of having a very talented photographer as
your business partner). Until our next big event, keep well and plan some
parties and contact us so we can make it a memorable one for you
xxx
Lauretta
Website: www.laeventsandphotography.co.za
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