On Saturday, July 10, 2010, I had the privilege of attending my 10-year high school reunion. Oh what a journey it has been to reach this eventful day. Last August, me and about a little more than 20 of my former classmates, all met for dinner at BJ’s in Tanforan. The purpose? To start planning the 10-year reunion of Phillip & Sala Burton’s Class of 2000. Everyone had great ideas. Bottom line? We wanted a semi-formal event. Basically a reason to get dressed up nice. Our goal? Recreate our Senior Prom. LOL Because honestly, our Senior Prom was WACK!
After months of surveying other students, visiting numerous venues, and playing with numbers that we didn’t have, we finally decided on booking the Holiday Inn SFO. I had been there for a wedding a few years back, and remembered it was actually nice. Jenille and I looked at so many packages the hotel had to offer, and finally settled for the second best package (after all we weren’t planning a wedding lol). With the cost of the hotel (included one-hour open bar, appetizers, three course meal, seat covers, contribution for the deposit to hold the date, and free rental of ballroom), DJ, photographer, and other extras, we configured that we would need to ask everyone for $75 a ticket. This is where we hit a major bump in the road. Not many were willing to pay that much, despite how good we made the package. It was a big let down. I decided to go back to Holiday Inn and see if I could negotiate a contract with them. After about an hour of negotiating, the coordinator, Laura, offered us a great deal. Rent the ballroom for $500, and a choice between: steak, salmon, or pasta for $38 a plate. SOLD! Let’s sign this contract.
You would think dropping the ticket price to $60 would make people happier. Nope. People still weren’t happy. We did everything we could. Offered payment plans where they could pay bit by bit each month, or just pay the whole balance to get it over with. Just collecting a $25 deposit was difficult. It was really discouraging. To top that, we were getting a lot of negative feedback. Here I was missing my lunch breaks doing research to find places. Using my days off visiting different venues, when I could be spending it with my family or sleeping in all day. Then all I would get in return, was words of discouragement, or negative feedback. It was heartbreaking. Then you had Jenille, who had a family of her own too, a full time job, and classes after work, trying to configure numbers to make the reunion happen. Then there was Melvin, using up so much energy to get people hyped to go, only to get the same words of discouragement or negative feedback in return. I honestly wanted to quit. I think if it weren’t for the advice my friend Chris gave me, who actually helped plan the reunion for Class of 1999, I would have said, “That’s it! I quit. Screw this!” Thank you Chris for that motivation to keep going. It really did help.
(To be continued . . . . .)
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