The Winter Wonderland Ball was a formal event hosted at the Tacoma Convention Center Dec. 3 from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. 

It is the first all-school formal in 10 years.

According to Bookkeeper Haley Consmo, a total of 438 tickets were sold and they made $8,715 from the event.

“The money pays for the venue, the DJ, any sort of decorations that are needed, but for this one they opted not to do decorations, and they also paid for water, so all of the money goes for that,” Consmo said. “And any money that is left over, since it is a fundraiser, goes towards the class of 2023; it goes towards their prom, their graduation, senior lunches and anything like that.”

Leadership teacher Jamie Mooring and her leadership students worked to put on the event. She says attendance and cost impacted previous attempts at holding a formal.

“Kids just weren’t interested in attending and with the attendance dropping, it just wasn’t worth the cost; we ended up losing too much money,” Mooring said.

The leadership team had to find a location that was both available on specific dates and big enough to fit a portion of the school.

“We just had to find a location that could accommodate our numbers on the dates we had available,” Mooring said. The dates were super specific because we wanted to choose something that didn’t impact the play, concerts, sports or any activities like that, we chose a date based on the least impact on clubs and activities.”

With so many places eligible for holding a Winter Ball, many were wondering why the Tacoma Convention Center was chosen as the venue for the event.

“The Tacoma Convention Center is a perfect venue for us because it’s big and there’s a lot of indoor spaces before you even get into the dance floor, so you don’t have to wait outside in the rain. It just accommodates the size of events that we generally have,” Mooring said.

Goals are frequently set by party planners in order to achieve greatness in their event.

“As far as goals go, it was really just to provide students an opportunity to get together and do something that wasn’t related to the school, so it didn’t take much,” Mooring said.

It is sometimes necessary to recognize the most significant contributors to a project.

“It doesn’t take that much to put the dance together, but I do think it’s really cool that we had students design the tickets for the first time. A student in [Jennifer] West’s class did it, and West sent me about 20 different designs that the students had created,” Mooring said. “And then, my kids who were planning the dance chose the one that they liked best and so Alexander Weaver was the ticket they chose.”