Goodbye New Jersey

This week I had my final day of work at The Cellar and I finished up my internship on Wednesday.

Monday I went into the office to work with the sales and marketing director.  We had two couples scheduled to come for a venue tour and sales meeting at 10:30 and 2:00.  I was able to help with both of these tours.  These two couples provided me with different outlooks on options an event planner can offer for weddings other than the traditional ceremony and reception. The second couple was really only planning on having a wedding for their family. They wanted something simple like a brunch or a cocktail style reception.  They didn’t want anything elaborate or formal, so during our sales meeting, we were able to present them with all the options One Atlantic had to offer for them, along with all the pricing and details. The third couple wanted an intimate ceremony with only 20 of their immediate family present. We were able to show the couple how the ceremony would be set up for an intimate ceremony, along with providing them with vendors for floral arrangements and photography to capture their day.

Later that day, I helped with the marketing budget. I created formulas in an Excel spreadsheet that calculated our projected and actual expenditure on each form of marketing for each month. This helped me see how to create a budget, the importance of it, and it provided me with insight on which forms of media are important for marketing in the event industry.

One Atlantic has also been featured in magazines like The Knot and Brides. One of my jobs while interning at One Atlantic was to archive our pages from these magazines to be used in the future as marketing materials to show to potential couples. Using the prints from the magazines, allows the sales team so show what types of high end events One Atlantic can provide and execute.

 

Wednesday was my final day at One Atlantic and it was really bittersweet.  The last event I worked was the Atlantic City Air Show.  The Air Show is favorite of many in Atlantic City.  For about four hours, planes and helicopters performed aerial acrobats in the sky over the Atlantic Ocean. Some of the highlights of the Air Show included the Army Golden Knights and the Air Force Thunderbirds.  One Atlantic pre sold tickets to various companies and also individuals to watch the Air Show from our floor to ceiling windows.  We honestly provided the best view of all of Atlantic City between our windows and private terrace.  Along with a spectacular view, we also had a lunch buffet for all the guests.  It included a mashed potato bar (my personal favorite), panini station, pasta, Mediterranean station, along with a variety of salads.  Executing this event required a ton of organization.  The planner had to send out all the tickets ahead of time so guests would be allowed up into our venue.  They also had to create a system to keep the separate companies bar tabs in order.  They decided on wrist bands so we had 5 different wristbands to help our bartenders out.

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I am happy that I enjoyed my internship so much and had a great experience with it, but I’m sad to see it come to and end.  With all this being said, I am also extremely excited to go back home and then later head up to school.  At my internship, I learned tons of valuable information about the event industry. I learned how very stressful and high paced the environment can be, but the most important thing is to try to prepare yourself for the unexpected because you cannot anticipate everything. I learned all about coordinating and orchestrating the kitchen with the event.  I also learned all about banquet management and sales and marketing. I had a great experience at One Atlantic doing my internship and I am looking forward to furthering my career in the event industry after graduation this upcoming May.  

Tonight my parents are coming and we’re going out to dinner to a restaurant I have been wanting to go to in Atlantic City, then tomorrow morning we’ll be packing up the remainder of my apartment and heading back to the 717. I am so lucky and blessed that I was able to have this experience all summer.

Weekly Update

I’ve fallen a little behind on my blogging, but I’ll give you guys a quick run through of what I’ve been up to!

Wednesday

Dan and Megan were down in Avalon on vacation with Megan’s family for the week, so since I had the day off I decided to go visit them.  I hadn’t seen them since we were all in Cape May over a month ago so I really missed them!  Megan’s family is really great and always so welcoming.  We had the perfect beach day! It was sunny and warm, with a little bit of a breeze.  Living at the beach has turned me into quite the “beach day” critic, but that day was phenomenal.

 

Thursday

Thursday morning, Jess and Madi came for a visit! We went to the beach for a little while and then headed back home to start getting ready for the real reason they were here: BLAKE SHELTON!  Atlantic City was hosting a free Blake Shelton concert on the beach and they got tickets for it and so did Kelsey and I.  It was so much fun! I’ve never experienced a beach concert but it was awesome! There were so many people there, it was pure chaos.  A lot of people were camping out on the beach since 10 am to get good spots, but we decided we didn’t need to go into the city until 3.  Even though we didn’t get there until 3:30 we still got prime spots for the concert.  We ended up in zone 3 which was as close as you could get without having a “fan zone” pass. Dan and Shay were the opening act and there was even a surprise appearance by Danielle Bradbury because her and Blake are best buds! Afterwards we hung out to see Blake leave and we made friends with some Atlantic City police officers! Blake left in one of the vans we saw, but the windows were really tinted so you couldn’t really see him.  After the concert, there were fireworks, so we watched them from the beach for a little while.  It was such a fun night and I was glad I could spend it with good friends!

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Friday

Friday morning I went to my internship for a few hours before having to go to work.  At my internship, I’m now in the sales and marketing portion of the program.  I worked on updating One Atlantic’s Pinterest page for a while.  This is important because social media is the new way of marketing for businesses.  It is especially important because a lot of people use Pinterest for wedding ideas and since that is our industry, we want to create a strong Pinterest presence to gain attention.  After I finished that, I updated the website by adding tags to all of our photos to create Search Engine Optimization.  This is something I learned about in a few of my Mass Communication classes, so it was cool to actually do it.  Search engine optimization is a way of placing yourself at the top or near the top of search engine results.  We also had a couple come in for tour and information meeting, so I asked Joey if I could sit in on that meeting with her.  They were from New York and were looking at getting married at One Atlantic. After the meeting, they seemed pretty interested and were asking about deposits and wedding dates available so I think they’re probably going to book with us.  I really enjoy working in sales, because it allowed me to use some of my Mass Communications and interpersonal skills to do the social media and speak with the couples.   My favorite part of the internship has been all the face to face interaction I get with the bride and grooms whether it be during the event, tastings, or final detail meetings.

Saturday

My parents came down for the weekend and Saturday was a pretty cloudy/rainy day so it wasn’t a good day for the beach.  Fortunately I had been wanting to do a couple touristy things in the area while I had been down here, so Saturday provided the perfect day for that.   First we went to Lucy the Elephant.  Lucy the Elephant is located in Margate, NJ, which is just a couple beaches south of Atlantic City.  Lucy is a 6 story elephant structure from the 1880s.  I’m not going to talk about the whole history of Lucy, but you can look it at here if you’re interested.  Its a pretty cool thing. While we were there, there were signs posted about them filming for a show, so when we came out of the elephant after our tour, there were people asking us to sign release forms for television.  It ended up being National Geographic filming for a show on human behavior.  Kelsey was interviewed, so watch out for her television debut coming in November!

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After the elephant, we headed into Atlantic City to get some boardwalk food for lunch.  Aunt Cindy hadn’t been to Atlantic City at all yet this summer so she was really anxious to get there.  We walked around for a little while and then drove to the Absecon Lighthouse located at the northern end of Atlantic City.

Sunday

Sunday was the second free concert.  It was Lady Antebellum! I’ve never seen them perform live so I was excited about that.  Alex and Sierra, winners from the third season of X-Factor were the opening act.  I’ve never listened to them but they had some good songs.  Then Lady A came on and they were really good! I love a lot of their songs and they were really personable with the crowd.  Once again, we waited to go into the city until 3:00 and we still managed to get the same spots in Zone 3 as last time.  We were pretty lucky both days!

After the concert, Kelsey got proposed to and married in a matter of seconds

We went and had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe after trying to get into two other restaurants that had extremely long waits.  We ordered our food and were sitting there.  A guy walked by with bruschetta and we were looking at his plate longingly and he stopped and asked if it was for our table.  We said, “no but it looks delicious” so he took it to the table it was for and stopped at our table on the way back.  He asked if we wanted some. We both just kinda looked at him like what? and he said “I’m the manager,  I can do what I want” so a few minutes later we were enjoying a plate a of fresh (& free) bruschetta! It was really  good!  Once again, it was a really fun day! I love concerts and was kinda bummed thinking I wouldn’t get to go to any this summer, then these two free concerts happened!