Gala fundraiser

On Saturday I co-hosted a gala fundraiser with the lovely Cheryl. We’re both running the London Marathon this year for the same charity so we decided to put on a fabulous party and make lots of money. And we did!

Somehow we pulled it off. Thanks to Cheryl’s sister, a professional musician, we had some great contacts and managed to line up a gospel choir, a jazz group and a 3-piece band. And thanks to a friend at Diageo we also had some most excellent champagne that we picked up for just £8 a bottle. All we needed were some classy canapés, decorations, a team of people to serve champagne, work the bar and greet guests, a DJ to play in between the live music and about 100 guests.

We spent most of the run up to the event hassling people to buy a ticket for a minimum £25 donation. We were incredibly organised and even set up a paypal account to sell tickets online.

The week before the event, from Cyprus I might add, I started contacting local businesses to ask if they’d donate some goods or services that we could serve or sell. No responses. Cheryl put together the running order of the night and I confirmed our resident DJ would spin tunes all night.

Two days before the event I had a brilliant email from Cakes4Fun offering up a selection of cakes to serve. Sweets sorted!

The day before the event we decided we’d better figure out how to decorate the venue and what to serve as canapés. By about 8pm on Friday night we knew what we wanted to do. Oh and on Friday I also decided we should auction some prizes to raise more funds. I mentioned this to my lovely hairdresser as I was getting a cut and he got a gift voucher all ready. I rang up my artist friend Nicky and she rapidly put 2 pieces of work together. And somehow we scrounged up two other fabulous prizes.

That left Saturday daytime to buy decorations, set up all the music equipment, decorate the venue, have a sound check with all the musicians and be ready to open the doors at 7pm. Oh, and don’t forget about shopping for all the ingredients for canapés (on foot), doing the food prep at home, transporting everything to the venue, picking up the cakes, assembling some artfully decorated food plates, refrigerating the champagne and sorting out the guest list. Plus, we had to look fabulous. Cue MASSIVE panic.

But somehow, it all worked. Nicky showed up at my door at noon and taste-tested my smoked mackerel paté. She chopped all the bits up for the bruschetta topping while I sliced, brushed and baked about 150 pieces of baguette. I won’t get into the vegetables, the dip, the pain in my hand from slicing 150 pieces of cheese, the smoked salmon debacle, the caper cream cheese and the endless crackers.

By about 6:45pm we were at the venue, it was set up and looking gorgeous, the champagne glasses were out, the fizz chilled and we had some platters of food ready to go. So with minutes to spare we hit the showers to wash off the mackerel stink, threw on our dresses and heels and made it back out front just in time.

The guests started to come in and the champagne started to flow. I ran back and forth between the door – where I was greeting guests and handing out the fizz – and the main room where I was making introductions ‘American style’ and making sure people mingled and had fun. LM ran the bar all night and other friends kept popping their heads up and offering to help. Working the room and pouring champagne, refilling the canapés, showing people where to hang their coats. It all got done. It was an extraordinary community effort. We never once had to ask for help, our friends just spotted something that needed doing and they did it.

Then the music started. It was phenomenal. Somehow nobody had quite realised that we had 3 professional groups lined up. I guess they thought that since it was for charity that they’d get a glass of champagne and hear a couple of amateur bands. But no, we poured and poured all night until everyone was nice and lubricated. (And then we did the charity auction. Very successful.) And all 3 acts were just incredible. The food went down pretty well too, hardly a bite left over.

I crawled home just after 3am. We raised £1,180 for charity.

It was a seriously great night. There have already been requests to run it again next year. We’ll see how the first marathon goes before deciding to do another one.