Christmas Eve was amazing. We had two services in the Elan Ballroom at Chateau Elan, and everything was gorgeous. This year we had help from the guys at DCR Media, and their expertise + our learning via school of hard knocks led to a super-organized, minimally-stressful, totally rockstar service. We pulled off our most technically-complicated adventure yet, and it makes me really excited when thinking about the future of theVine!
Nick’s stars looked amazing, especially when coupled with all the LED lighting…

Here was my view for the evening. I think the most exciting part of the night for me was watching our team do such an amazing job! It’s so cool to see people find the sweet-spot of their talents, and two of our people were in new positions…clearly positions they were made for! Morgan Collins OWNED calling all the camera shots, even though we only gave her one preview monitor. :) Homegirl earned herself a future seat at the video console in our imaginary video control room. Robbie Pancake had been holding out on us with his phenomenal camera skills, and he got crazy-awesome shots all night! In addition to providing quality entertainment on the tech comm system, Nick & James held down the wide shots, and Mr. Kris Jones (a.k.a. MacDaddyPro) handled ProPresenter like a champ. Also, we couldn’t have done what we did without the 20-or-so volunteers who assisted with set-up and tear-down…it went smoother and faster than ever before, thanks to their dedication! (and muscles.) I still can’t believe I get to be a part of this team…it’s surreal. And in Braselton. Haha. Braselton?!? Who would have thought…

Tanner enjoyed getting all dressed-up and coming to Christmas Eve with LaLa and PaPa, and she was especially excited about eating grapes from the snack area!!! That was the highlight of the night for her.

And finally, this was just too cool not to take a picture of … it’s in the atrium at Chateau Elan — they put millions of REAL cranberries in their fountain!!! It was sooo awesome. And creative. Major cool points.

The music was great, the message was great, nobody caught anything on fire, nothing glass got broken, the Macs behaved, and only one person got gaff taped. :)
I can’t wait for 2009 at theVine!