Winter Festival Looked Magical. It Almost Wasn’t.

Winter Festival looked magical.

Lights, music, kids running around from game to game.

Parents chatting. Teachers smiling.

From the outside, it looked easy.

Like everything just came together.

But behind the scenes?

It was a little more stressful than that.

The Part That Actually Stressed Me

The real stress for me wasn’t decorations or planning.

It was volunteers.

When you plan a school event like this you can organize every detail… but you still don’t know who will actually show up to help.

I kept checking but no new volunteers reach out for this event.

This made my anxiety grow and grow.

We started asking for volunteers 2 months before the event via our school’s announcement app.

Hoping parents would see it early enough to plan ahead and sign up.

I decided to plan for no volunteers and hopefully be surprised.

The Behind-the-Scenes that nobody sees

We tried to plan for everything, from concessions to games to bounce houses and even inviting the fire department.

We divided and conquered – concessions, games, bounce house rentals and food trucks, and set up.

Approved Vendor Lists

I quickly found out that if you are planning an event with vendors they have to be approved by your school district.

Your school district has a list of approved vendors that can be on school property. So best to get your hands on your approved vendors list as soon as possible.

I was able to find our approved vendors list on our school districts’ website.

We went through our approved vendors list and were able to get contact information for a few bounce house vendors and started contacting them for quotes.

Food truck vendors from the approved vendor list were also contacted via email.

What we learned about booking vendors

We learned that food truck vendors needed to be booked months ahead of time. Some vendors also advised us that some needed a guarantee or fee to be booked. I had never worked on something like this and we werent goint to guarantee a payment as this was a fundraiser.

Since we wanted to also sell concessions to raise money we just decided not to ask any food truck vendors to our event. So we scratched that off our list.

We did learn from our interactions from bounce house rentals that they were willing to negotiate and give us the nonprofit tax exemotion when we showed them our PTA paperwork. IYKYK

We had 3 bounce house rental vendors that we liked and got the prrice quotes and voted on the best one. We thanked them all and selected our venfor the event.

Setting up Games

Our game set up, was planned and ordered from Aamzon, and set up amazingly.

We bought most of our games for the festival, from small bowling set ups, to fishing for a prize, to ring toss, it was amaing. Our team did a great job.

Games were simple yet fun, simple ideas that kept kids busy and engaged, we set up about 10-15 games. Side by side, so students and siblings played from one game to the other winning small to large prizes.

Even a toddler area was made so little younger siblings can go play in a small area with a small blow up bounce house some one loaned to us from their back yard. Chairs were set up in this area to give parents a place to sit while watching their little ones.

Texts. Vendor coordination. Budget questions. Making sure tables, signs, and tickets are ready.

And a lot of small decisions all week long.

Nothing huge on its own.

But all together… it adds up.

The Moment I Knew It Was Going to Work

Then the day finally came.

Volunteers started showing up.

Kids started arriving.

And the fire department actually made it.

That moment when the truck pulled in?

Instant excitement.

At that point I finally took a deep breath.

Because that’s when I knew… okay, this is actually going to work.The Best Part

Seeing the kids enjoy it.

That’s always the best part.

Running around. Laughing. Getting excited over the little things.

All the planning suddenly felt worth it.

What I Learned

Planning something like this always teaches you a few things.

Some things worked really well.

Some things I would simplify next time.

And some things reminded me how important volunteers really are.

PTA events don’t happen because of one person.

They happen because a group of people decides to show up.

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Closing Reflection

At the end of the night I was tired.

But also really proud.

These events take a lot of work.

But they also bring the school community together in a way that’s really special.

And that part makes it worth it.