Seasonal events done right

During last week's rant about how to properly theme a community event, I mentioned how it had been done much better for last year's Halloween party and how I never got roung to posting anything about it at the time.

As a quicker reminder, that was during a break that I was taking to address a poor mental health situation that I was dealing with but I was very keen to make a one-off return just for that event. Of course, I took loads and loads of pics. None of them ever got posted though. 

At the time, I didn't want to immediately post them because I felt that that might give peeps the false impression that I'd returned from my break. My intention instead was to post them as soon as I genuinely did return, which ended up being over a month later. However, that meant that we'd already slipped into Christmas territory and that then dominated all of my posts going forwards. So the Halloween event kind of got forgotten about.

So, I feel like this is the ideal time to dig up that one and cast a nostalgic eye back to a fun event, which should have acted as a good template for how future community events could be organised.

However, as you can probably imagine, it's difficult to recollect the exact details of what I personally got up to at a party that happened over 4 months ago. For that reason, I won't even attempt to give my usual full rundown of the event. Instead I'll just highlight some of the things that I felt were well done by the organisers.

Well, before that, I should mention that I did join in the dressing up fun. I decided to go back to the well of outfits that I know from past experience, and picked a sexy Freddy Kruger as my outfit. I like that one because it's fairly easy to pull off and fits nice with the horror them of Halloween. Also, did I mention that it was sexy? Oh, I did? Obviously that means I didn't quite go the whole hog by wearing a mask or make-up to reproduce Freddy's burn scars but whatever.

And that leads nicely into mentioning how good the general level of costumes and cosplays were. Not only were all the outfits really good, but there was also a really high percentage of party-goers who choose to took part. It was a really fucking good effort on everyone's part and demonstrates how guests should be encouraged to embrace the event theme.

Presumably, part of the reason that there was such good participation in dressing up was that the organisers were running a costume competition. Two areas were reserved for a pair of official photographers to take photos of guests who wanted to enter the competition. And, let me tell, you judging by the length of the two queues for the photographers, a hell of a lot of guests wanted to take part.

All of the official photos were then posted on social media for the community to vote on to pick the winners.

This then circles back to what I was saying about my own outfit, because I saw a few others there dressed as Freddy Kruger. That was a little disappointing as I like to be original and unique, although I feel like my look was at least as good as all of them and definitely a lot sexier.

That said, there was one that was very cool and I was very pleased to see that he had entered the costume competition. I will happily disclose that he got one of my photos. And, if my memory is correct, he managed to pick up one of the Top 3 prizes, so that was a vote well spent

So yeah, that was a very good way to embrace the event theme and generate easy guest engagement. Future event organisers should definitely take note.

if the competition wasn't enough to generate some buzz around the theme, the venue also did a very good job. All the sorts of decoration that you would expect to find at a Halloween event were spotted around the venue. 

We had spider-webs with giant spiders, piles of pumpkins, coffins, rows of gallows, spooky houses, random faux dismembered limbs and probably other things that I can't remember.

Also, there were plenty of food and drinks options. Very important stuff for a big party. Bonus points for all the burgers and hotdogs being flam grilled. With Halloweens close proximity to Bonfire Night, those two have always kind of gone hand in hand for me so I do like a fire element being brought to my Halloween.

And there you go; that's about all I can recall of the party, but I think you get the general drift and clearly see how much better the theming was than for the Valentine's Day party.