Clean Up in Aisle Nine

When I mention confetti, or even glitter, some event planners immediately cringe. It took me a while to get past my tic anytime someone mentioned confetti when I was the in-house planner at a large facility. However, when planning a celebration, it’s hard to stay away from exploding streamer cannons, bright lights, and loud music, am I right?

I was reminiscing with a friend the other day about some of the crazy events we planned when working with middle schoolers. This demographic is up for anything and those working with them are just as wild and creative as they are.

Because I work most often with faith-based organizations, budgets are one of the largest constraints. This causes us to come up with many unique ideas. For weeks ahead of one event, a leader had students hole-punching and ripping up construction paper to fill several large boxes with confetti.” He then strung the boxes on the ceiling to create a make-shift confetti-drop zone. Let me tell you, the amount of tiny pieces of paper in those boxes was unbelievable. It took days to clean up the immediate mess, and for years later, confetti blew out of the vents every time the heat kicked on.

Without any heads up to the event planning team, this same leader had another wonderful idea. Let’s have students bob for prizes in a large tub of mayonnaise. Yes, you heard me correctly, mayonnaise. One little darling with beautiful, long, red hair wasn’t going to let a little mayonnaise stop her; she was determined to win a prize. After finding an item amongst the muck, she pulled her head out, whipped her hair up and over her head like a swimsuit model, and realized she was a hot mess. Mortified, she then ran, mayonnaise-a-flyin’, through that room, across the hall, through another room, and into a bathroom to clean up.

Needless to say, the stage, carpet, hallways, door handles, bathroom paper towel dispensers, trashcan, countertop, mirror, and stalls were collateral damage. Talk about clean up. Mayonnaise smells after a day or two, and not in a nice way. More like a “where did someone hide that sardine” kind of way. The students had a lot of fun, but with a little heads up, we could have laid down plastic, had towels available, prepared the bathrooms better, and given them all free t-shirts. Another one for the lessons-learned file.

We all know glitter is in a category of its own. I can’t imagine what a glitter factory looks like. Just a spec of it lingers for all of eternity. Don’t get me wrong, I love glitter. I have glitter shoes, glitter skirts, glitter shirts, a glitter jumper, and even glitter pants. But, cleaning up this stuff is an act of futility. Most venues ban it from even entering their doors. However, most events where children are involved often include glitter. It sticks to glue like white on rice and makes beautiful, colorful patterns on paper for them to bring home to mom.

All this to say, as event planners, we get to help create various, special moments for our clients. Some are more messy than others. When planning an event like this, be sure you ask about the costs. When using a confetti cannon, depending on the venue and size of the cannon, you may have to pay a pyrotechnic company to come in and shoot them off. And I have paid thousands of dollars in clean up fees over the years. Knowing up front what the costs are for the party atmosphere, will help you and your client make the right decisions for the event.

Do you have a confetti clean up story? Share it here or send me an email. I’d love to hear it.

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