Gala/Ball Planning Thread

I thought about putting some fancy little description or passage here, but fuck it. It's late, and I'm tired.

So! The Vanguard presents....

An Event! A Grand Affair! Of what sort --- We don't know!

Here are the actual descriptions of what we're considering:

A Ball : A formal social gathering for dancing. Social dancing embodies much of the evening, though ballroom or more intimate forms of dancing may or may not occur throughout the night. Social dance is a major category or classification of dance-forms or dance styles, where sociability and socializing are the primary focuses of the dancing. Activities are usually limited to cocktail drinks beforehand, and dancing throughout the night. There are two types of dress in actual balls: black and white tie, and more rarely, military decoration may be allowed. Black tie is a semi-formal state, white tie refers to the most formal form of dress used for social events. I have no idea how this would translate in-game.

A Gala: A festival or gala is an event, usually and ordinarily staged by a local community, which centers on and celebrates some unique aspect of that community and the Festival. They may consist of dancing, in particular social and ceremonial dancing depending on the purpose for the gala, feasts, traditional games and other entertainment-based activities. May last anywhere from several hours to several weeks, and are often tied to religious holidays or commemorative events.

A Dinner-Ball : Exactly what it sounds like. Dinner is served first, often a large feast, followed by cocktail drinks and dancing until the morning hours. Think your typical high-class wedding reception.

Networking would be most likely to happen at a ball, as the entire purpose of it is to be social. A gala is more centered towards entertainment and fun, and would be more difficult to plan as a larger variety of activities would need to be arranged. A dinner-ball is similar to a gala in that I have no fucking idea how we would stage that... though banquet tables could be used and that would be epic.

What I want from you guys in this thread is opinions and suggestions on how to make this event special. We will be inviting other alliance guilds to this event, and I would love for it to stand out as a fun memory for those involved. Let's do something that sets us apart.

My own ideas:
Masquerade Ball - Look this one up. It takes a while to explain, but what sets it apart is that you attend masked, alone, and with the intention of no one knowing who the hell you are. Might not be good for networking, but could be a lot of fun regardless. I've only seen an event like this done once.
Snowball - Literally a ball held in the snow. A snowball is a winter ball, held to celebrate the dawning of the new season. I was thinking that location would be key here, while I wouldn't advocate holding the actual ball IN the snow (because that would fucking suck) I do think that it should be held somewhere... a little frosty. Places in Northrend, near Ironforge, and even a few in Winterspring come to mind. This would take a lot of planning, however, and finding suitable dress for this would be a challenge.


Give me your thoughts!

I'm a personal sucker for masquerades. They're absolutely amazing just at their core.

I'm voting a ball all in all since that probably will be the easiest to plan especially for our first server wide event. And since it is our first event having a big drive on social aspects will be good, since it'll give our characters a good chance to network as you mentioned.

We'd probably want to set up something of a music list. I don't think livestreaming would be a good idea but possibly a youtube playlist or something of the sort? It would obviously be optional for people to listen to but it would probably help a good deal with atmosphere.

Dress. It would probably have to translate to armor of some sort for males. There's a fairly limited number of formal outfits. Though we could put a restriction on it? To make it more true to the idea of a ball and not having people in armor, possibly limit what people can wear to either leather or mail. It'll give people a bit more to work with without them being in full plate.

I'm on the fence with the idea of limiting or restricting weapons. I remember The Dawnguard did this for an event. Possibly restrict it to formal/dress weapons? Ones that aren't exactly for battle.

If we do go with a masquerade, I think that a midnight unmasking is in order... with networking taking place afterwards for a few hours. Serve drinks at that point, imo.

Edit to address weapons : It's a ball, and a noble's affair. No weapons.

An unmasking would be necessary and it would be a lot of fun imo.

From what I know a lot of people are interested in masquerades. I mean who doesn't find costumes amazing?

Masquerade. Just so Thor can show up in T8.... But... first he needs T8 ._.

Does Worgen form count? For a masq?

I say we host all of these, it's just a matter of what to do first.

My Choices:

1) Masquerade Ball, though finding an outfit for a priest that doesn't make her look like a priest is going to be fun.

2) Gala- Specifically because they are essentially fundraisers for the rich. They are usually held to promote a message or seasonal affair, which could be useful for our storyline.

Would we want to hold possibly a Winter's Veil Masquerade? Like with a winter theme and shit.

I think either way we'd want to use this as a Winter's Veil sort of deal, just because it falls on that. Either that or Thanksgiving/Harvest Festival, and then another for Winter's Veil.

Maybe a Harvest Gala and then the Masquerade for Winter's Veil after there had been a bit of networking at the previous event (the Gala.)

Harvest Gala is a no-go. We simply don't have the time to pull that together, not with me being as exhausted as I have been.

Winter's Veil... we can do a lot with. Ideally, I'd like to be able to plan around 1 event per year quarter of server-wide acclaim. Perhaps alternate it with WorldRPPvP events/campaigns.