Juliana, I sent a check (yes, snail mail ... I imagine it's crawling past Dubuque about now).

OK. Back from meeting Eva and Lilibeth (catering manager) and all is well. I'll post up with details when I get back from next round of errands, and also start getting some basic menu stuff taken care of, but in a nutshell:

1. I have a list of rooms booked, who booked them, etc, and what we need to meet the minimum. Shouldn't be a problem.

2. I have a free adjoining room to erika's (for erika's mom or whomsever is lucky enough to be erika's F2F minion).

3. I have them providing us with at least two small fridges in the hospitality suite, leaving beds in the double bedroom, but taking the beds out of the second one in favour of more chairs and tables.

4. All our rooms will be on the 14th floor or the 12th. Those on the fourteenth will have room keys that automatically access the hospitality suite, from Thursday afternoon on. Those on the twelfth will have a second key awaiting for them at the front desk, that accesses the hospitality suite.

5. They will provide us with a whiteboard, no prob.

6. They're happy to set up a small bar poolside for earlier in our Prom doings, and then move us all indoors to the banquet room, where the full bar and buffet will be set up.

7. They have no problem with a) live music, b) recorded music, c) us providing our own PA, d) us providing our own DVD player for the HS, d) us wandering all over the hotel in corsets, or e) us having as much food of our own as we can hold in the HS (note to catering manager at the Miyako: fuck you muchly).

8. Combined bar/menu costs for prom: bar can be done either as a preset or as a cash bar, depending on what y'all would like.

9. They're delighted to store luggage for B2B, and get the request every year, and are used to it.

More later. Must fly.

Have I mentioned lately how much deb rocks? Because yeah. You do, doll. Thanks so much for all of your hard work.

4. All our rooms will be on the 14th floor or the 12th. Those on the fourteenth will have room keys that automatically access the hospitality suite, from Thursday afternoon on. Those on the twelfth will have a second key awaiting for them at the front desk, that accesses the hospitality suite.

This = frelling awesome.

LOVE #4. That's so cool.

It's all cool! Whoo and hoo! I get more excited everyday.

Hotay. Back from Many Errands On Foot All Over Freakin' Town and What Did Universe Do Without iPods? stuff.

So, let's see. A few things I didn't get to in the above list:

1. The room block. At the moment, we have 50 "room nights" of the needed 60, at least if I'm (ugh) counting right: 8 rooms on Thursday, 15 Friday, 17 Saturday, and all 10 of the 10 reserved for Sunday. That seems to make 50. Plus, there's one reservation for the Wednesday before and two on the Monday night. And that's with a month to go before the 16 April cutoff. So I suspect we're fine, there.

2. Can I get a rough estimate - I know it's early yet and we have plenty of time - for non-guests at the hotel who will need a parking space at the hotel during Prom? I told Eva I'd try to get a her number that was at least ballpark; Matt and Beth, for instance, or Sparky, or Maidengurl or Consuela? That is, people driving for Prom but not staying at the hotel but who really would rather park in a little corner of the HICC's garage that says "reserved for Buffistas"?

3. How would you like to handle looking at the menu selections? My own take - shared with Eva and Lilibeth, who handles the catering - is that, since we have to spend a minimum anyway, we should probably get one dish for the carnivores, one for the veggievores, something with fish, and a honking big dessert tray. We're thinking refillable chafing dishes; she's very happy indeed to be working with someone who speaks cateringese.

By the way:

As people have to check out, it's a final gathering place.

Not sure I was clear - it would be ours through checkout on Sunday. IOW, through noon, which is when the hotel guests are checked out anyway.

Do we want it through Monday morning, for any reason? I'm actually thinking we might, since it appears we have ten guests on Sunday night.

Sunday afternoon it was really nice to have in DC, and if there are that many still on Monday morning, that might be good as well.

It's been nice in the past to have the HS an extra day so that after people check out on Sunday, they can hang out there until it's time to go to the airport. So even if we won't need it Sunday night necessarily, it'd be nice to have it all day.