Blog#7 The Christmas Party Booking/The (Difficult) Load In

The Christmas Party Booking

Our most prolific type of booking is without a doubt the wedding reception.  We absolutely love to help make the bride and groom's day by making sure that all of the finite details of their special day are tended to.  The wedding reception booking is also the most involved.

A More Straight Forward Booking

Other types of celebrations; birthday parties, corporate celebrations, and christmas bookings for example are more straight forward.  For example, we can't play the wrong song during the first dance, we don't have to work to such specific timings including cutting the cake and evening guests arriving, and we might not be requested to arrive so early.

The Load In

Our load in can vary hugely from venue to venue.  At some we're able to back up our vehicles to a door right next to the stage, hey presto . . all our equipment loaded in within 10 minutes.  Others may require a tricky walk through a number of doors and up flights of stairs which all take considerably longer.  Our load in at the christmas party at the brilliant Norfolk Broads Yacht Club in Wroxham however was notably more challenging than this.

Before we even got into the site of the venue we had to punch a code into a machine to activate the opening of the gates.  Only we had no idea of this, so phone calls and a few minutes later we eventually negotiated our way in.

The closest we could realistically get our vehicles to the venue was about 150 metres away.  We then had to offload our (expensive) equipment in large wooden carts that had to be pulled by hand down a dirt track/path in the pitch black and frozen weather (-1 I think) and over a little pedestrian bridge, and then up some tricky twisty corrugated iron steps to get into the venue.  Luckily the stage area was just inside the door.  Thank goodness it wasn't raining, I dread to think how difficult that would have been.  

Happy & Willing To Do What It Takes

We're always happy and willing to do what has to be done to make every booking work as smoothly as possible and leave plenty of time for load in and set up.  On this occasion however such tricky circumstances weren't anticipated, and by the time we had loaded in it was later than I had hoped.  This in turn means that the pressure is on set up our sound system, lights and instruments in faster time to be ready and out of the way by the time the guests arrive.

Playing at venues we are familiar with helps us plan our travel, load in, and set up more accurately.  When performing at venues for the first time we have to allow for plenty of time just in case circumstances are more difficult than anticipated.

In the next blog I'll be talking about how this booking was rather alternative, how my fan destroyed part of the back drop of the stage, the interesting cuisine and our actual performance.

Thank you for reading,





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