Scheduling Issues

Well, plans are underway for this year's two big events- our 4th annual date auction and our 7th Anniversary Celebration. Seven years already, it doesn't seem real. I'm having a bit of an issue though in terms of scheduling. I want to hold the date auction on Friday, Sept. 17- that is it's usual time of the first Friday after the Memorial Day week. I also want to hold our anniversary event two weeks later on the first Friday in October (10/1), but the problem is that night is the start of a 3 game Red Sox series against the Yankees. It is the last baseball series of the regular season. I'm not sure what I should do. The following weekend is Columbus Day weekend and I already know that some people go away. If I move it later in the month, then I'm competing against possible Red Sox play off games. The post season schedule won't be out for a while and I can't wait for that before I set the date. One solution is to have my event the night before, Thursday, Sept. 30. I've done it once before on a Thursday and have heard that people like Friday nights better since that is the "going out" night and they don't have to head home early for work. Most people that come to our event are not traveling very far and our event is over by 9pm, so it shouldn't really be that big a deal though.

Obviously, some people are going to have an excuse for not attending no matter what. I just want to make every effort to pick a good night for our event. I know Red Sox/Yanks games are always a big deal, but who knows- maybe one of the teams may have a miserable season and those games won't be that important- or it may rain and the game will be canceled. Friday nights are generally a better night to host an event, but I also don't want to compete with Sox/Yanks at the end of the regular season. Our event is also early, so people could still come and go home and watch the rest of the game. We could even have a television brought in, but I don't want people to spend their time watching a baseball game and not bidding on our items or listening to our speaker. Maybe, Thursday would be the better night then- I'm really not sure. I'm going to email our board tomorrow and get their opinion and I'll also email a couple of other people and see what they think. I can't do it the week before because that is only 1 week after our date auction and I don't want to wait until November- the WS is still played in early November, so it would have to be after the first week, and then there could possibly be weather issues and also- it is too long to hold off the calendar debut until November.

Please let me know what you think we should do- I'm definitely looking for some feedback on my scheduling issue. Do we go with Friday, Oct. 1 and compete with a Red Sox/Yanks game or move it to Thursday night and deal with peeps potentially not wanting to go out on a Thursday? Or should I contact MLB and have them move the Red Sox/Yanks game to Thursday instead? I think that would be the best solution!

I don't need to make an immediate decision, but I do want to pick a date by the middle of next week. I'm also trying to decide whether or not I should venue shop for our date auction. I do love Gypsy Bar, but I think we might be outgrowing our space and need a bigger venue. Venue shopping is a big undertaking, and I'm not really sure that I need to do that. Gypsy Bar is still a cool place for our event and we definitely would make it work well again this year. It just would be great to have more space. I'm going to think about it a bit more.

Well friends, that's the latest and greatest for tonight. I can't believe I'm already back to work on the date auction and anniv. event- I don't feel quite ready to start work on them. Anyways, I'm off to bed- it's a new year, but I'm still working on trying to get to bed earlier. It's 12:35 right now, so that's actually pretty good! Until tomorrow...