A Saturday Night Hoedown

From the desk of: Kate Beebe

Often times as an event planner, your first order of business with your client is selecting their venue and date. If you’re lucky, sometimes your client has already secured a venue and and date. If you’re really REALLY lucky, your client is the Lovelane Special Needs Horseback Riding Program and they are looking to you to build a venue from scratch in the middle of a grazing pasture in rural Massachussetts for a Saturday night hoedown featuring the Barenaked Ladies.

Wow, right?!

Upon starting at AE Events, I had heard of the infamous Lovelane Hoedown and was rather thrilled when I saw my name down on the staffing sheet next to it. Truthfully, I am quite scared of horses (ironic… I’m aware), but everything else ‘Hoedown’ I was ready for.

Unlike other events that we plan, this event is built from the ground up. Onsite, it takes close to two weeks to build it all and take it all down. This of course is all for one, in this case unprecedented, evening. Definitely a bit different than a night in a hotel ballroom!

This year we took the conceptions of a ‘hoedown’ to a whole new level. No gingham print, no denim fabric, but rather natural fibers, terracotta hues, gunmetal and tribal prints. The elevated look impressed our crowd who was eager to join Lovelane once again post covid.

More impressive was our vendor dream team who brought the Hoedown ambiance to life through decor, food, entertainment, music and more. For this event, the logistics spanned pages and pages and our partners not only accommodated the nuances of this venue but did so without complaint or without concern. Everyone was ready to battle and work a little bit harder for what would be one of th emost impressive non-profit events of the 2022 season.

At start time, I removed myself from the hustle and bustle and realized the magnitude of this event and how much I had accomplished to get it to event day and how good it feels to do it for an organization that is not only impactful in ways that span beyond what we understand, but also an organization made up of some of the kindest people.

As much as this is my job - to plan events - some still take my breath away and seem surreal. I think it goes without saying that this was one of them.