Times are weird would be an understatement. Life has flipped and flopped and nothing feels normal anymore. But this past weekend I had my first market since before the world shut down.
I won't be shy and will say that I was hesitant and sat on the fence about if I wanted to still participate in the show or not. Every show since March has been cancelled, or delayed again and again. In communication with the show runners, they worked so hard to create a show that was so different than what had originally been planned for the weekend. They moved from the Oak Brook Mall courtyard to the gorgeous 10 acre grounds at The Drake Hotel in Oak Brook. They created a space for "socially distant shopping."
Everything was outdoors. All vendor tents were at least 10 ft apart instead of being butted up next to each other. Shoppers and vendors were required to wear masks and everyone had hand sanitizer. I was spraying down my set up twice an hour on top of everything.
This was my first outdoor show and my first two day show. After not having done a show in months, and then starting with all this extra newness, well I'm taking a few days to rest up after the chaos of prepping all last week. And I am so happy that I committed to the show, as I had my best weekend of sales to date.
The great thing about the show being two days, was that having one afternoon of storms didn't ruin everything. Amazingly the show got busy again on Saturday afternoon after we had two hours of rain. But Sunday followed with sunshine and a much needed cool down.
I'm so glad that I have more of these shows to look forward to in the near future.