The Sun Also Rises...

Life right now is a roller coaster for everyone it seems. If you watch the news one day the world is coming to an end, but the next day the forecast is brighter. It is hard to know how to cope with the uncertainty, at least that’s how I have been feeling. The good news is, we believe the once amorphous future of events is starting to take shape. I was particularly heartened after reading a few articles discussing the adaptability of our industry and the progress of live events taking place in the upcoming months and I wanted to share those details with you….

TicketMaster has reported they will be moving forward with concerts in 2021. The precautions will be many with the first and foremost caveat requiring ticket holders to have a negative COVID-19 test in order to attend. The logistics of the plan is still being fine tuned, but the working concept is the ticket holder would verify their COVID-free status via their cell phones within a 24- to 72-hour window of concert date. This is not vastly different than the requirements of air travel to certain locations.

The ability to attend a concert won’t be the only return to normalcy. In fact, there are quite a few smaller events happening throughout the state of Texas this holiday season. One of the larger being “Luminova Holidays” which will be held at Globe Life Park. The stadium will feature what’s sure to be millions of twinkling lights and an outdoor skating rink providing a truly unique on-field experience. For tickets, use "ACVB" as the discount code to get 15% off tickets, valid Nov 20 - 29.

Arlington can also boast of being the neutral site for this year’s MLB World Series back in October. The venue restricted occupancy to 25% of the capacity, still a whopping 11,500 patrons, and there were no reported outbreaks in correlation to this event. Many outdoor stadiums and arenas can take their cues from Globe Life Park’s success and feel confident that, with vigilance and proper safety measures in place, live sporting events can be made accessible to the public again.

In Austin this week, Dave Chappelle held 3 live shows all of which immediately sold out. Of course, ample safety precautions were in place and well-received by attendees. All shows were held at an outdoor venue with seating by party in bookings of 4-8 people, socially distanced from others. Guests were asked to take a rapid COVID test upon arrival and, naturally, masks were required.

In the hospitality industry specifically, a national industry meeting dubbed the “World Education Congress for Meeting Professionals International” was held live at the Gaylord Texan Resort in Grapevine, Texas, with 600 professionals in attendance. The purpose of the meeting was not only to discuss safe meetings and proper disease mitigation at events but also to demonstrate it.

All of the events that have taken place over the last few weeks combined with those on the horizon of 2021, prove that, as an industry, we are capable of tackling the challenges before us. The creative, intelligent, resourceful professionals who are in the trenches, working every day to create safe spaces and smart strategies with our clients and their guests in mind will no doubt, see the sun rise on a new and better day for live events.

“We’ve got this!”

- Katie Day, President

How To Look Great On Screen

This week I decided to compile all the fun tidbits I’ve learned on looking great on screen. From lighting angles that work wonders to light-reflection in SPF, I’ll take you through the good, the bad and the ugly of being recorded in high definition and how to avoid all those extra chins.

Quick Summary

Step 3: Use the right equipment

Step 4: Adjust your settings

Step 1: Perfect your lighting

Step 2: Find the best camera angle

Ready, Set, Go!

UncompliKated SPF is the perfect face sunscreen solution to set your makeup and protect your skin!

• Super fine mist for more even coverage

• Sets makeup instantly

• Provides a matte finish and soft focus effect and blurs the appearance of lines and wrinkles

• SPF 50 Broad Spectrum Sunscreen protects skin from harmful, skin-aging UV rays

• Light Diffusing Silicone Powder softens the appearance of lines and wrinkles, reduces shine and provides a matte finish

• Hyaluronic Acid increases hydration and helps to smooth the appearance of skin

• Fragrance Note: Lavender Essential Oil

This organic SPF 30 sunscreen spray provides sheer sun protection and keeps your morning makeup fresh until you hit the hay. Talk about a multi-tasker! Infused with soothing aloe vera and cooling cucumber, this matte-finish sunscreen mist also hydrates. Spritz on the SPF mist for weightless, no-shine protection anytime, anywhere.

A Firm Foundation

This modern foundation combines a matte finish and medium-to-full buildable coverage with broad spectrum SPF 15 protection. Applies, builds and blends easily and evenly while controlling oil and shine with a non-caking, breathable formula. Comfortable and extremely long-wearing, it helps minimize the appearance of pores and imperfections, giving skin a smoother and more even look and finish. Available in our most inclusive range of colours.

• Broad spectrum SPF 15

• 24-hour wear

• Controls oil and shine, 6 hours

• Provides immediate and long-term moisture, 8 hours

• Non-acnegenic, Oil-free

• For all skin types, especially oily skin

• Sweat- and humidity-resistant

Shockingly lightweight, waterproof and pigmented AF, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop Full Coverage Foundation is a full coverage classic foundation that hustles as hard as you do. This comfy, long-wearing waterproof liquid comes in a wide range of flattering tones that don’t transfer. Every creamy liquid shade glides on smooth, delivering matte coverage that stays true up to 24 hours. This over achiever also works to control shine and mattify your complexion all-day long. But it doesn’t stop there: this classic foundation is noncomedogenic and suitable for normal, oily, combination, and sensitive skin types.

Pure Flesh is a lush liquid foundation that comes in 40 shades covering 7 different undertones. With medium, natural-looking coverage, it’s never cakey, lasts all day, and cares for your skin as much as you do with its skin-loving ingredients.

• Medium to Full coverage with a natural, skin-like finish

• Infused with Aloe vera to help soothe and hydrate skin

• Contains glycerin, squalane, sodium hyaluronate (a form of hyaluronic acid), to help skin feel smooth and moisturized all day long

• Contains pomegranate extract for an exceptionally soft, lightweight texture and a velvety finish

• Cleanly formulated without parabens, phthalates, petrochemicals, mineral oils, silicones,. Whew!

• Fragrance free, Cruelty Free, Vegan

Contour & Control

Keep oil at bay all day with this simple, fuss free compact by Revolution Beauty. The portable pressed powder is formulated to leave skin with a matte finish, diffusing the appearance of shine and pores. True to skin tone, it won’t settle in lines or pores. A pressed powder is for those who want more control over coverage and on the go touch ups. Suitable for all skin types and available in 10 skin-true shades.

This Contour Powder Kit by Anastasia Beverly Hills is an all-in-one contour powder kit containing 3 highlighter shades and 3 contour shades in matte and shimmer finishes. Featuring Anastasia Beverly Hills’ innovative pressed, contour powder formula, this professional-quality face makeup collection lets you brighten, sculpt and color correct with seamless blendability. The finely milled powder formula provides buildable coverage and effortlessly blends and adheres to skin.

A favorite for prolonging the wear of makeup, banishing shine, brightening and balancing skin tone. For a natural look, this finely milled powder can be dusted on using a fluffy brush or using a sponge makeup applicator for baking precision to lock in contour and highlight. If you want areas to look brighter, make sure to damp the sponge and pat on a thick coat of powder. Loose powders are a good option for those who desire a luminous, silky and even finish. Now in 10 shades for all skin tones!

This finely-milled, gluten-free, vegan, Oat (Translucent) Flour® Setting Powder allows you to set your concealer and foundation in place for a long day's wear. This amazing, colorless formula puts the oily face battle to rest. With an HD feature, it will noticeably blur your pores and soften your complexion leaving you with a beautiful, matte finish. Plus, the jar's lock mechanism prevents product from spilling out - so you can bake with every. last. bit!

From The Many Desks of the President...

As I finally sat down to write this blog post, my kiddos buzzing around my desk, I began to consider how I could possibly sustain the situation I found myself in. Quarantining in Dallas, Texas, our household includes myself, my husband and our 6-year-old and 9-year-old children, both of whom we are now homeschooling. Surprise! Now I know I’m not the only one in this position but I am also the Owner and President of a small business that has been hit remarkably hard by this pandemic.

When the world started closing down and clients began to reschedule and/or cancel their events, I had a lot to consider. My primary role in my company is mostly as the CFO; taking care of day to day finances and strategizing for the future. As one can imagine, spending the last few weeks learning the ins and outs of new government stimulus options for SBAs, filing insurance claims, and worrying about our own staff has been compounded by the complexity of vendor payments and, honestly, trying to predict the future. Did I mention I now have my family leaning on me during work-hours for meals, learning, entertainment and general mom-things?

Pre-COVID19, I had a blissfully predictable schedule. My kids attended school from 8:00am to 4:00pm, I had the opportunity to manage a good workout and a solid six to seven hours of focused work. I really had it all. Now, my days have been overrun by video calls for my children’s school, teaching, reading, overseeing test-taking, math facts, and what feels like endless paperwork. (THANK YOU to all the teachers out there who do this Monday through Friday!) Amidst the chaos, I’m lucky to muster two hours a day to put my head down and really work.

I have always considered myself an exceptional multitasker and early on, I woke up each morning with a sunny disposition, saying, “I am going to take on this day like I do any challenge and I am going to conquer it.” I planned, reviewed lessons, scrutinized my schedule, and assigned my own work duties each day and yet, a productive day seemed out of reach. After a few weeks of incomplete to-do lists and falling short of my goals, I began to feel uncertain about the woman in the mirror. I‘ve run marathons and completed an Iron Man and somehow, the hurdles of managing my life, my family’s lives and keeping the business afloat were bringing me to my knees.

March was a difficult month, April felt impossible, but then came May. The end of the school year finish line in sight and I finally feel like I’ve “hit my stride.” The normalcy of a schedule is beginning to emerge from the craziness and, thanks to the regular chats I have with Tacy (our VP) the lows don’t feel quite so low and the tearful moments are fewer and further between. I am learning to operate in a new way and, most importantly, I’m learning to allow myself a little grace.

I have always been a goal-setter and in the past few weeks, I have redoubled my efforts on the outlook for 2021 and beyond. I have allowed myself to dream with big goals and celebrate little wins with smaller ones. I have had the opportunity to reflect not only on the business, but on my personal life as well. Giving myself the space and time to articulate both my frustrations and my aspirations has left me in an overall, better place.

Today, I see more clearly. My children are doing well with school and I am lucky to have the time with them that many parents do not have with their kids. Meritage Events is still in business despite the fiscal consequences of coronavirus and the uncertainty of what is to come for our industry.

And here I am, still setting audacious goals with fierce determination to conquer them.

- Katie

Back To Life, Back to Reality

Imagine you are going about your daily routine and job responsibilities in early February, then you snap your fingers and BOOM, you are transported to mid-April in the thick of a global pandemic with a shelter in place order and a crying eight-week-old baby. That’s essentially what happened to me. 

You see, I began my 8 week maternity leave in mid-February, the day before I was induced to have my baby girl, Emma. Being a planner, I worked on a maternity plan for MONTHS full of proposals to finish, clients to check in on, leads to follow up on and more. I tapped different team members to help with different items, set reminders in our project management software, and had already anticipated what would be waiting for me when I came back in mid-April.

Well, let’s just say nothing went according to plan. As we now all know, about 2 weeks into my leave $h*t hit the fan. Being the amazing ladies they are, my team was trying to protect me from the tough, awful reality they were dealing with. The clients canceling events, leads no longer interested in talking to us, fellow planners and partners being laid off or furloughed...I could not believe what I was hearing.

Before I left, my plan was to come back after eight weeks and seamlessly resume the role I’ve maintained for over seven years. But you know what they say, “if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” I came back to a smaller team, an empty Spring calendar, a list of leads no longer needing our services, prospects no longer interested, a slew of relationships I spent 7+ years building no longer relevant due to lay offs and furloughs, and new job responsibilities due to our downsizing. Apparently we have a blog now? All while trying to figure out what the future brings for the hospitality industry and our clients and how to manage a household with a newborn and trying to avoid COVID-19.

Aside from the struggles at “the office”, there is the whole “raising a newborn during an epidemic” we’ve had to deal with. Not being able to have friends or family visit to meet Emma; not being able to just throw her in a carrier and roam Target on the days you just NEED to get out of the house; having to suit up in masks and gloves just to go to the pediatrician, only to then have to decide which parent gets to go into the exam room with her for her 2 month old shots; not being able to leave her with Grandma and Grandpa for a few hours just so we can get out of the house because really, there’s nowhere to go. Then there are the complications of running to the grocery store for essentials and having to sanitize everything when we get home to ensure everyone is safe (while she’s crying because you’re home and she wants you to hold her.) It’s tough. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t lay awake at night thinking about what would happen if my husband or I contracted COVID-19. Weeks without being able to hold my baby? Kiss those cheeks? Notice the changes she’s making daily? Surely enough to keep me awake more than I’d like to admit and I do not need another reason to lose precious sleep!)

My transition back to “the office,” however remote, was a bit more jarring than I’d planned. My days went from baby snuggles on the couch while binging Ozark season 3 and Tiger King, to staring at my Outlook inbox with no idea what the heck to do next. Not an awesome feeling for someone who always tries to have a Plan A, Plan B and 87 or so check lists at any given moment.  

To say the past few weeks have been stressful is an understatement. With all of this being said, I am ridiculously grateful for my supportive family nearby, a rockstar husband who my daughter adores, and the best team on the planet. A team who has understood this tough season I’m going through; a team who is giving me the time to adjust to this “new normal” they have had a few more weeks to process; a team who is working around newborn nap schedules (and I’m using “schedule” loosely); a team who looks past my blank stares on Zoom calls when I just cannot process anything else at the moment; a team who is giving me the grace I need and understands this is all temporary.

I think it’s safe to say 2020 has already been full of high highs and low lows. It’s also safe to say that I’ve never been more proud to be a part of the Meritage team.

We have been using this time to adapt...we have been brainstorming like crazy; acting like sponges to all types of new technology and virtual services; redesigning marketing collateral; checking in with clients and partners to see how they are hanging in there; strategizing, and, well, reaching for the stars.

This year Meritage will celebrate 15 years in business, and I’m going to assume on behalf of Katie and Tacy that this 15th year is the hardest. However, we are here to stay and excited for what the future holds, crying babies in the background of Zoom calls and all.

- Nicole