Still a Lucky Dog

Well the Lucky Dog Party has come and gone along with an extremely cold December week. Blame it on the weather, blame it on the fact that December 13th seemed to be the biggest shopping day of the year in NYC, blame it on the fact that the night of December 12th seemed to be the biggest drinking night of the year in NYC, blame it on the website freenyc.net who didn't list our event (in their defense they were already listing 10 events that Saturday and only 3 the following day), and blame it on my missing the deadline for free listings in Time Out NY (3 weeks in advance of your event BTW), but needless to say, the event didn't draw the crowd of dog owners we had prepared for and we didn't make our goal.

On one hand, the event felt more intimate, and due to mic issues I was at least able to communicate with the crowd since it was smaller. The runway show was still fun and a special surprise quest singer (Mariane) kicked off that portion of the afternoon with an unexpected belt of the National Anthem of all songs...followed up with the dog's "anthem" (How Much is that Dog in the Window)! Later though, one of the guests pointed out how out of date that song is since those of us who love dogs do NOT support pet stores!

Considering this was my first public event I am still proud that i gave it a try. It was a creative way to try to raise money (in conjunction with this blog) and we still did raise $1100 through both efforts combined!! We did have several costs associated with the event, however...the major one being insurance on the space. As everyone knows insurance is a necessary evil. IF the best crowd possible of 150 people and their dogs had arrived, I would have been grateful for the insurance, but since there was a third of that crowd there, and several without dogs even, I felt like it didn't matter.

Still, too much went into this event and I've learned so much about event planning, which is something I want to do more of, that this was nothing but good in the end and something I can put on my resume and point to in the experience category. Not a detail was missed (except i forgot to put pens out in the beginning of the event so people could fill out their raffle tickets!), the vendors were great and their set ups were great too. If anyone who came is reading this I thank you and hope you enjoyed yourself! If anyone who meant to come couldn't, i'm glad that you at least heard about the event/picked up the postcard at a local pet boutique/saw it on a blog, facebook, myspace or your meetup groups website, etc. I'd like to know which promotional events worked and which didn't and did ask several people who attended. Mainly it seemed like "word of mouth" worked the best.

Photos of the event should be posted by tonight on liveedit.com Both the user name and password are luckydog. Many who came took the opportunity to have a portrait taken of their dogs and i'm looking forward to seeing all of those as well as the party photos. We are a few days late in posting mainly because it takes a while to edit the photos, but also we were wiped out after Saturday night and now I am sick with a cold to boot!

Still, this is New York and the week before Christmas and the city is abuzz with SO many events that I want to make the rounds of and attend. And I'm looking at all of them with a new regard.... Appreciating the efforts that went into the making of them, and appreciating that I am on the guest end rather than the host end of these!