Joy of Life 2011

Every nonprofit has their "signature" event and for Cancer Care Services that is Joy of Life gala. In the past Joy of Life has been held on a Thursday evening, had a guest speaker and focused around good food/wine. When I was hired one of the things I was tasked with was taking Joy of Life to the next level. My goal is to build Joy of Life into a great party that everyone cannot wait to go to each year verse just another charity gala. So while the basics of the event remind the same, it saw LOTS of changes. Plus we were working with a venue that most in Fort Worth had been to a million times, so I had to get creative to give it a fun and festive vibe so they didn't feel like just another event at the country club. (all this on a VERY tight...and I mean TIGHT budget!)  

So began my creative research for ideas...and then figure out if we could afford to make them happen! All the event materials have had a purple feel to play up the wine emphasis and we just rebranded making our logo purple and teal. I decided that was the perfect direction to go in to help people really start to identify Cancer Care with the purple and teal, while remaining true to our pre-event marketing materials.   

After a lot of research I figured out it would be much cheaper for me to purchase everything for the centerpieces, rather than go through a florist. The best price I was able to get from all the florist bids was $75 a centerpiece. I was able to do them for $38 each and Cancer Care Services owns everything to use for future events! Granted my office did look like a mess for quite a while because of this plan! :)

Color palate of the feathers and the vase filler with the led lights! To get the lighter colored feathers we died white ones....this is NOT something I would recommend. Dying them, combing them out, drying them and getting them to fluff is a lot of work. If we wouldn't have already owned the white feathers we would have NEVER gone this route! 

All in all I am extremely pleased how everything turned out and we had a lot of fun putting together the centerpieces and candle holders! Plus I received a ton of compliments on how elegant but still really fun everything looked! (mission accomplished!)

The addition of a live band and dramatic lighting really helped set the mood of the evening! It was great seeing people having such a wonderful time enjoying good food and wine, with wonderful friends, while raising money for a great cause!

The Live and Silent Auctions were both a HUGE success! We had over 120 lots in the silent auction and it was the first time we have every had a live auction, which raised over $33,000 with the 6 items!  

And to top all of that off we DOUBLED what the event raised in 2010!! That means more money to help those in our community who are dealing with cancer! But the best part of it all was I got so this with some of my dearest friends by my side helping me out each step of the way!

Now I am sure Mel is going to shoot me for ending with this picture, but the randomness of this shot makes me crack up every time I look at it. (Kipper did good capturing this one!) But I guess I love it because it sums us all up so well!

Cheers to all the joys in your life! :)