Duvall Events

About three weeks ago I started working at Duvall Catering as a set-up gal. Me and three other guys move around tables, chairs, and chunks of stages for various conferences and large-scales meetings. Takes a lot of bicep strength and masculine grunting noises. This is a temporary gig for the month of November, the busy season. As my arms mold into those of a malnourished bodybuilder, I soak my aching leg muscles in hot showers at night before I drift off into the most satisfying of slumbers I’ve had since my farming days. This job keeps me perpetually sore. Perhaps I overexert myself trying to keep up with the “stronger-than-your-average-twenty-year-old-girl” fellas I work with. I have to pull my weight you know but I like it. It’s satisfying hard work. And the fellas make me laugh.

At the end of my first week, Duvall’s décor department was in need of some extra hands to help set up for a wedding that weekend. I heartily volunteered my services, telling them there’s nothing I like more than creative grunt work and I’d be tickled to help decorate. So I met them bright and early at the décor warehouse which is a girly dream come true. A big building filled entirely with fabrics, pillows, candles, flowers, lanterns, and sparkly things that you stab into patches of grass. I don’t consider myself a girly girl nor the type to be delighted by numerous shelves of girlish hobbies but even I squealed with enchantment as they brought me through the aisles to the loading dock.

To thrill me further, this particular wedding was taking place at Boone Hall. Much to the confusion of my Mexican Loves, I drove down the oak alley and parked my car at the Cotton Dock, the site of countless weddings and parties that keep the Mexicans up late, waiting for folks to leave so they can lock up for the night. I’ve made many coffee runs for the poor fellas that sit in the guard house, just waiting for it all to end. Perhaps I had the home court advantage here but I dazzled the décor gals with my efficient craftiness. I hung mason jars of candles from wooden beams and created centerpieces out of old books, flowers, and oyster shells. I felt alive. Girlishness flowed through my veins and I came up with Pinterest-worthy ideas I’d never thought possible.

The next weekend they borrowed me again to help set up for a fall-themed wedding in an old building Downtown. Again, I reigned supreme. I’ve now been printed a schedule from the décor department of all the parties for the rest of the month and when and where I need to be to help set up. I’m sensationally excited. I just love doing this. I don’t want to get myself over excited though because being hired to work for décor is no easy feat. They have lots of unpaid interns and almost no vacancies. So in the meantime, while I try to bamboozle my way to a legitimate position while still bypassing an internship, I take home lots of leftover flowers and centerpieces. Now my house is a lush garden of color that smells like decaying perfume.

I have plans for this business. I have ideas for their marketing and media but I’m trying to play it cool. I don’t want to come on too strong. For now, I’m just being a “yes-man”, which a little bird told me, is something the current interns are not. Upcoming are five weddings and a debutant ball which apparently is an utter nightmare. Turns out, the Ball is a floral terror. I’m being trained in florals next week, which just thrills me. 

So that's what I'm doing these days. I work six days a week with wacky hours from say, 9am -3pm for a set up and then we come back at 9 or 10pm to tear it all down again. Sometimes this goes on into the wee hours of the night but I just find it all oddly exciting.