Hoo rah

Saturday was the big event we've all been waiting for. It's been a month,
maybe 6 weeks, that we've known about this big contract. Mrs. A has
stressed her sanity, business finances and endurance to the maximum in
preperation for this day.

Was it a resounding success? Not really. But it wasn't a complete failure
either, let's get that out of the way right now. Many, many, MANY things
could have gone wrong that didn't. The few things that happened I feel were
handled with adoitness and efficiency. Mrs. A didn't even know things had
gone bad we handled them so well.

And everyone pulled together and did a great job helping out, so I'd like to
thank them. We were completely slammed, then completely idle, then slammed
again, and I feel each person pulled their weight and did a great job.

So what went wrong? Why the sombre tone? Well, we didn't pull down what we
were expecting. Mrs. A and I gauged the number of party goers and made a
guestimate on how many would purchase what packages and came up with what we
thought was a conservative number, (something like, if half the guests
bought only one picture.) Not only did we not hit that number, we didn't
even come close. We fell short on an order of magnitude. It was depressing
and shocking. It was almost insulting. It felt like we had wasted our
time.

I don't want to really belabor the point. Mrs. A is taking this the hardest
of all. This was supposed to be a big thing for her, for us. It was
supposed to help get us through to the end of the year and into next year.
The contract would lead to more contracts like it. There would be contacts
made, and possibly more wedding bookings for these young couples. We
thought the online store would be a great idea and it would pull down at
least as much as we took in with cash that night.

None of it happened. The only thing that happened is 7 people (some would
say 8) worked very hard and sacrified a large chunk of time for what
amounted to very little payoff. Mrs. A has worked just has hard by herself
at weddings for five times what we made that night. It was kind of a
dissappointment.

Now, she's not going to like that I wrote that, and I've tried to keep all
the names out of it for that reason. I'm actually kind of ticked at the
whole situation because I know she worked her ass off to make this happen
and it was received with such tepiditiy and aloofness that I'm almost upset
at them for being noncommittal snobs. I don't know what they expected, but
it wasn't us apparently.

We did learn a lot. The positive side of all this is that for next time we
know what needs to be added, removed, changed or rethought. We did make
some money and that was ok. We didn't get run out of the building. We had
a decent dinner. We got to dress up. We met some nice people. It wasn't a
complete loss. And as of now I'm done talking about it. I'm done talking
to her about it. If you care about her, you won't talk to her about it
either. It's over and we need to move on. It'll either get better or it'll
be forgotten.

Carry on.