Ball Planning Committee: Meeting 2! on Library

Katey Willow

September 10, 2023 11:45 AM

Ball Planning Committee: Meeting 2! by Katey Willow

Katey was always grateful for the bit of downtime she found over midterm recess. She was beginning to feel a bit… underwhelmed with her professional development. Of course, she loved her position at Sonora and found joy in her pediatric career, but for someone now into her thirties once hailed as a genius and prodigy to have no significant developments under her belt, she began to fear she would be seen as a disappointment or has-been. She had written some well-acclaimed papers, but thus far her research - a fairly minor endeavor she’d been conducting in the background - was not blossoming as she might have hoped.

Still, it was nice to get the students back to classes, and the first sniffling nose of the new semester brought a warm smile to her face as she provided a Pepper Up Potion. And what’s more, she had another project to return to now: the ball planning committee!

The first meeting had gone quite well, with a theme - enchanted forest - decided quite efficiently. It would be a somewhat Muggle portrayal of magic, really, with the sparkling woodland energy often contributed to fairies/the fae in their fairy tales.

“Welcome back, everyone,” Katey greeted her wonderful committee. “We made a lot of great decisions last semester, so now it’s time to nail down our vendors.” She had asked the group to gather any pamphlets or informational materials regarding bands or DJs, caterers, or any other service they might like to have, although she herself had procured quite a few. Of course, the school was more than capable of catering on their own, but she’d been given a decent enough budget that they might be able to swing it all, and she imagined it might be nice to let the Prairie Elves mostly have a night off.

She placed her pamphlets on one of the two closest tables. On the other was a (somewhat organized) heap of crafting supplies. “Over here,” she said, “is some materials for anyone who might like to work on making decorations. There’s a lot that can be done with magic when we arrive early to set up, but I personally think that our hard work will shine a lot more if we do a mix of practical and magical decorating.”

“Let’s try to split up pretty evenly and some people check out vendors while others do the crafts,” Katey smiled. “It’s all up to you, but let me know if you have any questions or need a little help.”

OOC: Safe to assume a variety of styles of musicians, foods, and other entertainment (live paintings, photobooths, etc.), whatever seems fun. Same for the craft supplies - whatever you need, within reason, is probably there.

Subthreads:

Decoration making by Alma Brockert

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Alma Brockert

September 19, 2023 7:29 PM

Decoration making by Alma Brockert

Because party-planning was an important skill for girls like Alma to have, she had decided to join the Ball planning committee. It was a good way to practice for when she grew up and had to throw parties and other events. Even though the Ball was not exactly the same as the society ones, one should aim to make things nice for their audience. There were things that one could do to make themselves happy and to suit their own tastes, but a party was for everyone who was attending to enjoy. Therefore, in a school where there were others that did not grow up like Alma did, the Ball could not be quite as formal.

Although, it should still be somewhat fancy because it was like the only time some people would get to dress up in fancy clothing. Which admittedly was not to everyone’s taste but that was just how the Ball had always been. It was still a formal event, just not as formal as society balls. Although she did not really think of enchanted forests as very fancy, she had heard of garden parties but those…were in gardens not forests.

Hence it being basically formal- ish . Which was fine, it was not as if Alma had to match her dress to the theme or anything. There was much less pressure to do so than if it had been a Renaissance theme or a particular color theme or something. In fact, a particular color theme where everyone had to wear that color would not be good at all since Alma felt like everyone should be able to wear whatever they wanted-within reason, they shouldn’t wear something that wasn’t right for the occasion-regardless of anyone else’s personal taste. LIke, her own taste was not at all similar to Liesl’s but her cousin should wear what she liked. People should be able to express themselves especially since they had to wear uniform robes a lot of the time.

Also, to be honest, she had to admit that initially she had not known exactly what was meant by an enchanted forest as far as a Ball theme went. Especially since Robyn had initially just said forest. Which to Alma just sounded like…trees. Make a bunch of trees for decor. Maybe some woodland creatures-admittedly, she might be able to find some of those but that might mean having to actually talk to Topaz and ask her for a favor, which was not a debt she wanted to obtain. Refreshments could be…wild plants and venison? And they could all dance around to forest sounds. This had seemed very weird to Alma, who was more of an indoorsy girl, and she’d assumed that this was a personal taste very specific to Robyn, no different than if Liesl wanted a spooky horror themed ball (Although there would have been a time of year where that would actually make sense, this was not it.)

And calling it an enchanted forest had not really helped Alma’s initial confusion either. Because to her, that had just meant the plants and animals were magical rather than mundane. Granted, that sounded more in the direction of the sort of thing Liesl might enjoy. So, Alma was glad to be able to get clarification and that it wasn’t really a bad idea.

Anyway, she had also joined the committee to meet people and get involved in a school activity, which she felt much more comfortable doing than her older brother did. Plus, even though her cousins Libby, Uriah and Miles who were her best friends would be coming in the next few years, Alma still wanted to make friends, because while Christopher and her older cousins were great, she was still kind of lonely and missing the ones that she was close to. The relative that was closest to her in age and degree of relation that was at Sonora right now was Olaf . That was not a lot of help when it came to needing company.

So,Alma had decided to join both the Ball planning committee and the Visual Arts club. She had always enjoyed making things that were pretty and nice and both those were things that would allow her to do so.

Therefore, when Miss Katey brought up the two activities they could choose from today, Alma was more inclined towards making decorations. While picking out which vendors they would use sounded important and a good exercise for her future, crafting just sounded much more fun. Not everything had to be about learning and building skills, sometimes things could just be fun.

She made her way over the crafts and settled in. Deciding this was a good time to try and make friends, Alma turned to the person next to her. “So, are you looking forward to the Ball?” Which could be a fairly loaded question, since she knew she definitely had a couple of cousins who weren’t for various reasons, but she figured if the person was on the Ball planning committee they had at least some positive sentiments towards the event, People like Olaf, for example, did not join things like this. Well, to be fair, Olaf lacked inclination to join anything, but especially things like his.

OOC: I'm going to assume that it was spelled out what was meant by "Enchanted Forest"

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