Innocent Village Fete
About the Fete:
Innocent (the smoothie people) hold an event every year, and this year they decided to hold a village fete on a dramatic scale. With traditional pastimes planned including dog agility, duck herding and welly wanging, we were very excited at the possibility of going along… then we managed to secure a stall! Yay!
The event was held in Regents Park and 60,000 people were predicted to attend over the two days.
Preparation:
We started the preparation for our first village fete about three weeks ago by setting to work to hand-make a mammoth, 94 flag piece of bunting to Innocent for their world record attempt, printing natural latex balloons and selecting which products would be the most popular on the day.
I managed to convince a couple of helpers that this would be a fun-tastic weekend, and after some bribing involving a few glasses of wine, I managed to secure the best people for the job!
I then had to allocate job titles so decided Laura would be ‘Balloon Distributor', Dave was ‘Strong Man' and obviously there was only one title for me on the day… ‘Boss'!
The Big Day!
Saturday the 4th August came faster than expected and we started the day with sleepy eyes and loud yawns at 5am! After loading up the huge van with all our stock and 3 helium canisters weighing 8 stone each, we were raring to go by 7am.
Laura, Dave and I hopped in the van with our gorgeous, brand new Little Cherry T-shirts made from Organic Cotton (made by the Eton T-Shirt Co.), and set off with great excitement for our showcase, beep beep!!
After singing a few songs completely out of tune, and rocking the van with our excitable dancing we finally arrived at Regents Park. We battled our way through the ground, found the little marquee we would call home for the next couple of days and set to work at once, making it our own.
Thanks to ReMark we had a fantastic sign to put up at the stall, and we hand-made a tablecloth especially – here we are!
We managed to inflate and give away just over a thousand balloons, which is pretty good going as our poor blistered fingers will attest to!
We used biodegradable raffia instead of ribbon and chose to tie knots rather than using plastic stoppers to ensure that within 6 months our balloons and ribbon would both have degraded. Here is Dave and Laura in action:
Here's Laura – now officially a professional balloon distributor!
We had a fantastic time meeting lots of lovely friendly customers, and found the reception very welcoming. After two very busy days, we packed the last few remaining stock items back into our trusty old van and set off into the sunset – homeward bound!
I would like to thank all the people who helped us set up the stall including the fantastic JD at Sledge and wonderful Lucinda at Innocent; you both made the organisation really smooth. Mostly, I would like to thank my two brilliant helpers on the day – Dave and Laura, I couldn't have done it without you; thank you so much!