Event planning for the holidays – start now!
Do you like to travel during the holidays, see theater shows, head to the city? We do and to be honest if you want to make these events work, they require a bit of planning ahead, holiday event tickets, hotels and even trains fill up early.
What do you want to do? Make a list. I have several family birthdays around Christmas time and for us, with grown children with busy lives of their own, if we want a family event to happen, it requires the planning strategy of a conference planner to find out who is available and when. Get the important, have to do activities out of the way first. Who is having Thanksgiving, who is having Christmas? Do you need a special date for a family Christmas or birthday celebration?
It helps to have the must have dates out of the way before finding out that the show you wanted to see is on the date of your family Thanksgiving. I booked tickets today for an event for my mother’s October birthday in November that are non-refundable, if that happened I would just be out of luck and money. So, we got the dates down, then started planning around them.
We have some family traditions we like to do if possible, a girl shopping trip to St. Louis, a holiday theater show if possible, and Keith and I like an Amana Colony getaway, the town is magical right before Christmas. We get together with friends it is a standing date that used to occur in December but after grandkids works out much better in January. These are a few things that make the holidays special for us.
For these events to work though, we had to book hotels, arrange schedules and buy tickets. While I admit some of the last minute holiday events are fun because of the spontaneous joy of having something happen out of the blue, it seems like these are few and far between.
So, this blog is just to serve as a reminder that St. Nick is on his way. While the frost is not yet on the Pumpkin and the National Farm Toy Show seems far away and the production of Elf at the Sangamon Auditorium seems like a glimmer over the horizon, they will all be on our doorstep before we know it! Plan, strategize then relax and enjoy the holidays.
