"...in hopes that a little food and some coffee will bring our Santa back to life. Now I find myself in the precarious position of trying to get a crowd buzzed enough and a Santa sober enough so they can, somehow, meet in the middle."
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Adventures of a Gala Guru by Donna Vessey Gala Guru Press
book review by Caroline Blaha-Black
Donna Vessey and her group of talented multitaskers tackles one difficult-to-plan party after another, be it planning a Christmas bash for a dentist, where the Santa is a Russian Grandfather Frost who can barely speak English, or throwing a wedding in Colorado, where the mother of the bride decides to upstage her own daughter and wants to be the center of attention.
The author is a former TV commercial actress and an owner of Donna Vessey Events, an event consulting company headquartered in Colorado. The book highlights some of her events that she planned for her many clients, and she describes the hard work, stress, and the long working hours, but also the many hilarious moments that she and her crew experienced while doing a job. Some of the highlights might include getting stopped by police on their way to a birthday party, where they were hired to pose as sexy call-girls to surprise the birthday boy, and many others.
While, at times, Vessey’s book might read like a manual to plan an event step-by-step, and the characters sometimes sound immature, she writes with a healthy dose of whimsy and humor that keeps the reader entertained and glued to the page. The other characters (i.e. real-life friends and employees of the author) are fleshed out in detail, so their personalities come through on the page. This is a light-hearted book that could be appreciated by anyone who has ever dealt with the nuances of planning a large event or by anyone else who loves a fun story to read.
Adventures of a Gala Guru won an honorable mention in the 2013 Eric Hoffer Book Award for the Commerical Fiction category.