Last Sunday, I had the privilege of watching 8 months worth of planning, coordinating, and organizing come together for one awesome event. Back in August, Melissa Gibbs was mentioning to me that her and JD wanted to have a some kind of carnival to celebrate the ending of Taylor's 3.5 year journey through chemotherapy for Lukemia. She said that she felt like it was something that she may need to talk to an "event planner" about. Having an uncle (Clarke) who owns an event planning company, I quickly put the two of them together! A couple of weeks later, I found myself agreeing to Melissa's ask for help by signing up to be the "Live Entertainment Coordinator" for the event. After one gigantic brain-storming session with about 15 other key folks, several event-naming discussions, and lots of prayer, "Taylor's Finish Line Festival" was officially locked in place, with LOTS of energy!
My job involved contacting and booking a variety of entertainment, from roaming acts to stage shows. I spent hours for the first couple of months looking into different kind of entertainment; everything from stilt walkers to jugglers to clowns to magicians to comedians to caricaturists to mascots/dressed characters to bands. I had two stages that were my responsibility and I had fun designing the line-up for each of them. After all was said and done, here's the run-down of all the entertainers I booked: 3 clowns/balloon twisters, 4 caricaturists, 2 magicians, 1 juggler/stilt walker, 1 juggling group, 7 dressed mascots/characters, 4 Carolina Top Cats, 3 bands, and 1 comedian/ventriliquist. Since I LOVE these kinds of things, I had a blast putting this piece of the gigantic puzzle that was the Finish Line Festival together.
The event overall honestly quadroupled in size from the first conversation Melissa and I had about it back in August to the final day. Melissa and JD were offered so many things from so many different companies and they just had a hard time saying no! By the end, a $25 ticket was a STEAL when considering all that you got to enjoy! Set-up for the event started at midnight the morning of, after the parking lots were cleared from the All-Star race the night before. I arrived at the track around 9:30 and quickly got to work! I had to secure and prepare three separate "Green Rooms" (hospitality suites) for my entertainers and get the stages, sound equipment, and volunteers ready for my folks to start checking in around noon. It was amazing to me to see how many people had a hand in the day and how much fun we all had while putting it all together! Shawn was my handy-dandy assistant and he and I flew around on our little golf cart like nobody's business taking care of anything the moment it came up! The Main stage entertainment started about 7:00, and since that was all coordinated by Charlotte Arrangements, I got to sit back and enjoy the remaining events! Shawn and I were grateful to enjoy dinner and cake up in the VIP suites with the Gibbs family and friends and then headed out to the grandstand to enjoy a ridiculous X-Games Motorcross stunt show and an awesome concert by TobyMac, with fireworks following. We got to hang out with our good friend, Moose (old YL Area Director when we were leaders), so that was an added bonus. Needless to say, I was exhausted by 10:30 when we arrived home, but it was so worth it! We ended up with about 6,000 people in attendance and tons of money raised for Make-A-Wish and Levine Childrens' hospital. Awesome day.
Here is a video of the entire day, beginning with some shots of the space in the early morning hours before much was there.....enjoy!
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