The Amazing Teacher Awards 2015!

Those who regularly read this blog will know I study Events Management at the University of Sunderland, and I'm in my second year. For those who have come across this because of the title, it's true! I am in my second year of the Events Management course at the University of Sunderland, and not doing too badly at the minute!
On Friday 13th March (worse date ever for a first event), we held the Amazing Teacher Awards at the Sunderland Marriott hotel and it was a huge success! It was also a huge relief, since we've been planning it since October. It seemed to come together fairly slowly, but somehow by the end, everything fell into place. And if we hadn't planned it so well, it really wouldn't have been as good!

The final few days before the event seem to be the busiest, and most exciting. Although we had our food taster session at the Marriott a few weeks ago:

There was still a couple of things to buy and finish up, like buying 25 bottles of wine for our winners and runners up! It's just as well we only had 7 categories… this could easily have been 50 bottles of wine!

Oh, and in the meantime, because I work for R&B Group, who provide technical support for award shows and conferences, I had the small matter of two North East Business Awards shows to deal with too!

Tyneside and Northumberland at Gosforth Park Marriott

And Durham and Wearside at Ramside Hall

Oh, and a Schools Awards!

But then on Friday it was ours!
The room magically transformed from this:

To this:

It looked amazing. I'm so pleased with how it turned out. This was our visualisation, so it looks even better than how we'd hoped!

We also had a great show, with no hiccups! Congratulations to all winners and shortlisted too!

All of our wine, trophies and certificates

And our amazing little cupcakes made by Jenny Penny Cupcakes

We get the photographs back next Tuesday, and they look fab from what I've seen so far.

Oh yeah, that was my dress:

Tried the 'bronzer' before the event. Turns out it was fake tan. Oops.

It's still orange hahaha

So thank you very much to everyone who contributed to our night. From those at the University, and also those from the union, to the Marriott, our sponsors, the music department, the lecturers and the students. I must also say a huge thank you to R&B Group, the company to supply all of our AV equipment. My dad owns this business (which is why I have a job!) and it was beyond kindness for him to have offered to do the whole show for me. Thank you also to my amazing friends Tez and Andrew for taking it in their stride and giving me a fantastic show!
I hope everyone had a good night, and it's quite nice to look through our hashtag #atawards15 to see what others thought of the night. Here's how mine ended at 2am:

Events are so glamorous

On to the next one!






Normal service is now resumed.

Went to Chichester to watch a colleague play in his band, because until now, we weren't sure if this band even existed hahaha. 

This proves that I can't even leave my sausage rolls unattended without Fletcher finding it

My cutiepie

And the day after the Amazing Teacher Awards, I was off to Sweden, for Melodifestivalen. This is the fourth year I've been at the final in Stockholm and it's never any less magical. I absolutely love being with 27000 other people in that arena, it's just something you can't describe.

I was beyond tired hahaha

Put these photos on full screen, they look amazing!

The atmosphere is amazing. When everybody puts their lights on their phone, and the whole place just lights up, like, wow. I know that happens at concerts too, but not with 27000 people.
Also, if you've never been, the floor manager Henrik Von Zweigbergk lets you know about what'll be happening during the show like, when they introduce the song, everyone has to clap and wave their little pompoms (previous years has been balloons - the pompoms definitely do not have the same effect), introduces the cameras, then song 2 for example, has snow in it, song 4 has pyrotechnics, song 5 you're to use your flashlights etc… and then he gets the whole arena to do a mexican wave. It never really works amazingly, because the top tier always gets left behind haha, but the effect works well, and when the floor does it, it looks great from where we were sitting this year!

Standard.

This was a snapchat, 'Had a green plopp today' hahahaha, so bad :P

So now I've been left with nothing to do anymore! That event took up so much of my time, I now have nothing to keep me as occupied anymore haha. Apart from 3 essays haha, but I'm essentially finished uni for the year now. How absolutely ridiculous.



Jordanavia :)