Halloween, Homecoming, and Hotels

We are getting married at the end of October, near Halloween, and Halloween in Chapel Hill is a big freakin' deal. The town of Chapel Hill has been promoting a "Homegrown Halloween" and trying to tone it down from the 80,000 folks who attended in years past. Since Chapel Hill only has about 55,000 people in it, that's a lot of extra people running around in costumes on Franklin Street.

 

See?

It's mostly college kids who stumble up and down Franklin Street, and of course Mr. Magic and I participated as well.  Wanna see?

 A Devil in Disguise - 2000

 Our friends as The Clue Characters

Mrs. Peacock and Mr. Green - 2002

Little Red Riding Ho(od) and BM Bunny - 2001

Holly Golightly (in the wake up scene) with Cat - 2007

 Amy Winehouse - 2009

 Mr. Magic and "Batman" as Dumbledore and Hermione

 

So, Halloween is a big deal, but won't really affect our wedding because it really only gets crazy the day/night of Halloween. But then there is homecoming. Recently, I began feeling really stressed wondering when UNC's homecoming weekend might be scheduled. But then I realized, the town and university would be crazy to plan Homecoming for that weekend, seeing as how they really have gone to great lengths to tone down the number of people coming into town for Halloween. I mean, they would be real idiots to plan those two major events so close together!

Ahem. They did. So, now, Halloween is right near our wedding, and UNC's Homecoming is the SAME DAY as our wedding. And, if you remember, I was also told that our wedding weekend is one of the Top 8 Most Popular Wedding Weekends in 2011. Why is this a problem, you ask? Because many of the hotels have contracts with the University, to give them first dibs on the rooms. And we have a lot of guests who are coming in from out of town.

 

I may have had an initial overly dramatic reaction. I may have written something on facebook that said "Hey thanks UNC! So what if I am still paying for my six years of undergraduate and graduate education that I got from you? It's cool. Way to schedule Homecoming on the day of our wedding! I guess our guests can just SLEEP ON THE STREET!!!"

Erm, yes. Just a bit overdramatic. Mr. Magic came to the rescue and immediately began calling hotels. Since we were literally calling places minutes after the homecoming date was announced, some hotels did not even know the date yet themselves. This ended up working to our advantage because we got the verbal go ahead from a hotel manager who said she'd be happy to set aside some room blocks for us. A week later, she said to me "It's a good thing you guys called so early! My supervisor told me we couldn't have any room blocks that weekend because of homecoming, but since we already promised it to you, he is letting us honor that agreement." Sweet!

Have you ever freaked out about something wedding related that turned out just fine?