The moments that make it all worthwhile

After all the crap I've been dealing with lately, I'm thrilled to finally have something come together so well that it is going down in the books as legendary.

We didn't plan on having a bop on Friday night. It started out as an innocent post-dinner cocktail party, which we were conveniently going to give a theme - since the new James Bond movie was coming out, we wanted to have a James Bond Casino Royale party. We always have cocktails after guest dinner, so it wasn't anything new to the schedule.

Then it started to develop slowly. When Anna and I got here and realized that this year's Fresher class is very heavily male-dominated, we decided to make the guest dinner an exchange dinner and invite the St. Hilda's MCR (who, besides being extremely cool, are the only all-female college left in Oxford). That way, we would have plenty of Bond girls to go with all of our James Bonds. After that, Michael, our president, was able to get us some DJ equipment and two people to DJ for us - all for free. And finally, I stopped in town and picked up a few decorations. Not much - some balloons, some streamers, and some James Bond postcards which I acquired for free at the local movie theatres. We had some Christmas lights, so we strung those up as well, and I printed out some "007" logos to hang up with the postcards. We spent less than £10 on decorations alltogether.

I had no idea that such little work would end up being so effective.

The decorations looked amazing - all silver and black and white, very sparkling and classy. I had a bunch of leftover postcards, so I spread those out on our guest dinner table to get people thinking about the party. I also printed out special menus (we usually handwrite them) with the 007 logo and the Goldeneye font, welcoming our guests to James Bond Night. We spent nearly an eighth of what we spent on our last "official" bop's decorations, and the effect was ten times better.

The DJs - one MCR member and one JCR member, who are both pro-DJs - were fantastic. Usually at these events, there is some random person doing the music, and its usually badly mixed and oddly arranged, stopping songs abruptly and switching to something completely random. Not for us - these guys were amazing. The music was nonstop all night, and so was the dancing. Someone commented that she had never seen Catz MCR members dance so hard for so long. Typically, there is a period when the music is just crap and everyone goes out to smoke, but not for us. The dance floor was packed all night, everyone was moving, and everyone was having a great time. Even the dean showed up, and he stayed the whole night, finishing the night off on the dance floor with the rest of us!

Everyone looked fabulous. Guys even wrote to me and asked if they could wear tuxes to dinner, and even those who didn't go to dinner put on a tux for the party. The girls looked amazing too, in all sorts of slinky gorgeous dresses. Our DJs dressed in all black, and our bar girls wore low-cut black dresses, fishnets and bowties. I carried around a fake gun all night, and took lots of pictures of everyone posing, James Bond style, which was fun. I think there is something about the atmosphere when everyone dresses up, because the whole night just felt really classy. It was amazing.

We advertised very little - we just sent emails to our members, and to St. Hilda's and Trinity MCR members as well. There were about 150 people there, which is the capacity of the room. We usually move furniture out, but we couldn't because there was a conference (plus, since it was an exchange dinner, we needed space for people to sit and enjoy cheese and chocolates after dinner). It wasn't even necessary to move anything - there was plenty of room to move and dance, even with the DJ equipment.

There were no incidents all night. No disgusting messes or damage, no overindulgence on the alcohol, no undergraduates trying to sneak in to the party, no noise complaints. Everyone just had a great time. Many Catz MCR members said it was the best bop they'd ever attended at Catz, and one of the folks from Trinity told us that we had set a standard.

It was also one of the most fun guest dinners I'd had in a long time. I had asked to do the seating plan, so I got to sit with a whole group of friends - Enrique, Seth, Elizabeth, Andy, Chrissie, Reb, Chung, Dominique. We also had some cool people near us, so there was great conversation all through the dinner.

Having an event go this well makes me look forward to planning more events. It was well attended, everyone was well dressed, and we did amazing financially - we spent less than £30 all together, and made a terrific profit. We couldn't have asked for a better night.

Catz has a reputation for being a very friendly and social college. I am proud to have made such a contribution towards keeping up with that reputation.

The pictures speak for themselves. More on Flickr, and on Facebook. Enjoy!