It's a 5 hour long event that exists as a sort of harvest festival of grapes. About 2,000 people attend. I had to track down wineries that would want to participate and donate wine to be poured and sort out all the state legal issues with it (getting permits and transfer forms etc), organizing staffing of about 150 workers, coordinating the days events (7 restaurants serving food, 2 live bands, 4 wine seminars, 3 cooking demonstrations, wine art, and grape stomping) and preparing everything for the day including creating all signage and printed materials....quite a task.
Anyway, I was a bit behind about 3-4 weeks leading up as I didn't fully understand all that was expected of me...once I got organized, I knocked it out pretty rapidly and even got a little ahead of myself. Even with a day or 2 to spare, I was pretty nervous about pulling this off as the areas that the festival was going to be occupying last Sunday was all in use on Saturday, so a lot hinged on our Conference Services Dept. busting their asses to get all the needed tables and chairs in place overnight.
I woke up at 4AM, tried to relax for a bit and then arrived at work at 6:30 AM. They were ahead of schedule and everything went pretty smoothly as I was obsessive compulsive about every little detail beforehand and the rest of the workers and wineries arrived around 10:00 and then the chaos set in. I was everywhere for the next 4-5 hours...on the phone and running everywhere making sure everything was perfect. The guests started showing up at 11 to get their tasting glasses and tickets even though no one can get in until 12. Once the gates opened, my job shifted from preparation/coordination to double and triple checking on everyone and getting a few last minute things....by about 2:30, no one needed me any more and I crashed. The next 2.5 hrs drug by as I was exhausted as heck.
All-in-all, everything went very smoothly and I received a lot of compliments from nearly everyone. This past week has been recovery...I was a zombie on Monday as the stress had left me and I didn't know how tired I was. I'm really proud of how well it all went and I feel like I accomplished something. It'll be something very good to have on my resume!
If you care, here are some pics...
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