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!

Jersey Shore Fist Pumping!

Saturday night I worked yet another wedding.  This time I was able to follow the banquet manager the entire time, so I was able to see what to do from start to finish of an event.  When I got there I helped Daniella, the event coordinator, set up the bridal room. Before every event, we stock the mini fridge with bottles of water for the bridal party and put out chilled champagne and champagne glasses.  We also have to put out chilled water bottles in the lobby or study for the groom and groomsmen.  After I set all that stuff up, I had to organize the place cards.  Usually we request that the bride give us the place cards already in alphabetical order, but this time they weren’t.  Therefore, I had to go through the whole stack of place cards and put them in alphabetical order.  Seems like an easy task, but they were done in calligraphy so I couldn’t even figure out what some of the letters were, so I had to use the printed guest lists to figure out their names and put them in order.  Then I placed them all in One Atlantic’s sand boxes for display.  There were no favors to set up for this wedding, instead the couple decided to make a donation to the American Heart Association in honor of the bride’s father and the groom’s grandmother.  During the ceremony, the bride had her father’s fedora with a red rose placed on what would’ve been his seat.  She also honored him with a charm on her bouquet and had part of one of his shirts sewn into her dress.  After I was finished with all of the set up, I was able to follow Paul for the remainder of the night.  I shadowed him during the server meeting.  This meeting is held at the beginning of their shift.  During it, Paul goes over the timeline of the event, the menu, guests with allergies or special needs, and any new changes One Atlantic may have.  Specifically this week there were two new items to be discussed.  The first one is that anybody under the age of 21 is not allowed to drink from glass.  This helps everyone know who is and is not of drinking age, as well as stop any hazards associated with glass wear.  The second new thing was that we were going to try to stop people from taking drinks onto the dance floor with them during the night, because glasses are often dropped or drinks spilled, which also causes hazards.  Later in the night we realized that its impossible to stop everyone, so we just supervised and made sure nobody was dancing out of control with drinks.  Daniella, Paul, and I were placing bets on which girl was going to drop her drink first.  The bride and groom wanted their reception to be like HQ and they were pretty close.  There was a lot of crazy dancing and fist pumping!  This couple had hired a Photo Booth for their wedding.  The guy operating it asked Kelsey, the other intern, and I if we wanted to be his test strip before the party started using it so we got to go in the Photo Booth and get a photo strip to take with us! For the rest of the night, I followed Paul, and saw how he managed the timeline and the food.  The toasts went much longer than anticipated so it messed up the rest of the timeline, so we had to move things around and arrange them so that we could get back on track.  The timeline is very important for the DJ, the banquet manager, and the kitchen, and they all need to make sure they are on the same page.  Another thing that the banquet manager does is make sure the bride and groom actually sit down and eat.  You would not believe how much you have to hound the couple to eat.  They are usually so busy talking to people and making their rounds that often they don’t get to eat their own wedding food!  Its really important that they get to eat, especially when they’ve been drinking all night like this couple.  This bridal party was a rowdy one! They LOVED the open bar, but I thought they were great! They were all really nice and fun.  The bride was so beautiful and not just because she had her hair and makeup done for her day, but you could tell how truly happy she was and that made her that much more beautiful.

On a side note, before introductions the groom’s grandmother walked up to me and asked, “Is it true that Snooki got married here or is getting married here?”  I thought this was the funniest thing I’ve heard.  Not only did the grandmother know who Snooki was but the fact that this rumor was floating around was hilarious.  So I just kinda laughed it off and was like “No, not to my knowledge”.  Later on I tell Daniella about this hilarious exchange, and she informed me that Snooki and JWoww filmed an episode for season 3 at One Atlantic.  It was Daniella’s 2nd day at work and they were there filming an episode like they were venue shopping! Daniella said since it was her 2nd day, she barely knew anything about the company yet and was so nervous during the filming. So obviously I had to come home and search for the episode and watch that part. After finding this all out, it made a lot more sense that the grandmother was asking me that question. Here’s the link if you want to check it out! (Minute 2:00)

 

 

Minimal Words

Thursday I had a visitor! Ms. Dani Rieland came to spend the night.  A ton of our Bloomsburg friends were coming to Atlantic City to see a friend of ours DJ at Harrah’s so we booked a room for Friday night with our friends Drew & Frank and their friends.  We had a great time with #friends and made lots of #memories. #sports.

 

After a great night out with friends, I worked a wedding Saturday night.  On three hours of sleep (not my best decision) the wedding was a bit of a struggle.  There’s not a whole lot to say about the wedding, because due to my lack of sleep and wild children, I don’t really remember much about the wedding in general. But I thought I would share some pictures with you all.

Today I was back in the office with the banquet manager.  I sat in on a “Final Detail” Meeting and listened to another one on the phone.  I was able to follow along with the Banquet Event Order and take notes.  I also created the server/bartender schedule for the beginning of August.  I had to look at when the events were, what time they started, and figure out what time the employees needed to arrive.  I looked at how many of each I needed for each event based off of the guest count and sent a mass text to the servers and bartenders.  They told me their availability then I added it to the schedule.  It was also important to make sure that the first people to text back got their events while making sure the “core” servers got the events they wanted.  After the this, I helped Daniella enter some menus into Reserve for upcoming weddings and tastings.  My last task of the day was to create a reception layout.  This couple wanted square tables instead of our usual circle tables, so I had to make the room diagram by hand.  This was actually my favorite part of the day, because it required logic and creativity.

After today I am technically at 121 hours out of my needed 120 hours.  Although I’m finished with my required hours, I’m going to continue to go to office hours and events to take the most from this internship that I can.

Independence Weekend

After working long days through the week and the holiday weekend, today I finally had a day off to relax.  This morning I decided to head to Brigantine to spend the day at the beach.  It was nice to be able to relax without any time constraints.  Usually when I go to the beach, I can’t really fully relax or take naps because I have to be at work at a certain time so today was really nice (and no seagulls attacked me).

 

Kelsey came back this evening after she spent some time at Ithaca.  We picked up my friend Michelle and went into Atlantic City to watch the fireworks tonight.  Atlantic City has one of the top five firework displays in the country for the 4th of July celebration.  The director of One Atlantic allowed all employees and friends/families to come up and watch the fireworks from the venue.  This gave us a spectacular view because we were already 100 yards over the ocean so we were really close to the fireworks. They shoot the fireworks off of two barges (boats) out in the ocean.  There was supposed to be one barge on each side of the pier so they could be seen from all the beaches but the one boat kept drifting so they were both on the same side.  Because they were on the opposite side of the terrace we were going to watch from, we moved everything inside and watched from the 15 foot windows.  It was still AMAZING! We were able to see both sets of fireworks go off together as they were originally choreographed so both sides of the pier would see the same show at the same time.  The director had a cart full of water, Johnson’s caramel popcorn, salt water taffy and macaroons for us to snack on during the fireworks.  It was really great experience overall.  It was really cool to see the water and the waves light up with each firework.  I am really glad they were postponed until tonight so I got to experience them!

 

Sand Sculpting World Cup

Today I did something a little different than my usual beach day.  I have seen the Sand Sculpting World Cup being advertised for a couple of weeks now and today was the first day I could get there.  My mom had an extra long weekend this week so she made the trip down to hang out for the weekend so we took on this adventure together!  I was really excited to go see the sculptures and the artists didn’t disappoint.

Every artist worked together to create this sculptor representing Atlantic City

The history of sand sculpting began right here in Atlantic City so its only natural for the World Cup to take place here as well.  Phillip McCord is considered the grandfather of sculpting.  Dating back to 1897 he sculpted near the steel pier which is wear the DO AC Sand Sculpting World Cup event is taking place this year. As years passed, the famous sand sculptors drew large crowds to Atlantic City.  Phillip McCord and other artists spent most of the year sculpting sand into figures and scene representing current events, issues, and interests.  Hotels and postcards started using photos of the sand sculptors to advertise Atlantic City.  After a huge storm in 1944, the sand sculptures were no longer a part of the attractions at Atlantic City.  Although you can’t see them every day along the boardwalk, they still remain a part of Atlantic City’s rich history.

For the 2014 DO AC Sand Sculpting World Cup, 20 of the top sculptors have come to Atlantic City from across the United States and 10 other countries to compete.  There were categories of singles & doubles.  There were also rules and regulations for each sculptor, along with a long list of criteria for judging.

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Afterwards Mom and I headed to the outlets located in downtown Atlantic City and then went to the Rainforest Cafe for lunch!  I was so happy to finally be able to spend a day with my mom after working the majority of the time she was here.

And So It Begins…

This past semester I took a class called Online Journalism in which we blogged about various topics related to journalism and the media (you can check out that blog here).  I took an interest in blogging and decided I would keep with it during the summer.  So if you would like to follow along with what I’m doing, this blog would be a perfect way to do so! I’m hoping to blog once or twice a week, but we’ll see how it goes once I get invested in my internship and part-time job.  I’m hoping to post lots of pictures and stories about my summer spent in New Jersey!

On Saturday, I will be taking off on the adventure of a lifetime as I move to New Jersey for an internship.  I will be interning at a premier wedding and event venue located over the Atlantic Ocean, called One Atlantic.  One Atlantic hosts a variety of events including weddings, Bat and Bar Mitzvahs,  and corporate events.  Over 12 weeks I will learn all the aspects of planning and executing an exclusive event.  I will be spending 3 weeks working with the departments of human resources, marketing & sales and 3 weeks with catering, 3 weeks with event coordination and 3 weeks with event planning.    I’ve known for quite a few years I wanted to pursue a career in event planning and fortunately I was given this fantastic opportunity this summer.  I’m extremely excited to see what happens during the course of 12 weeks, but it is also slightly scary as I move to a new state and spend my first summer away from Dillsburg, my family, and all my friends.  It is frightening and thrilling all at the same time.

You can follow all the happenings at One Atlantic on Facebook here.