Do you not feel guilty accepting large sums of money off people who can't even attend? You lot are just famous for being in a relationship, you don't actively help anyone in the LGBTQ community. If 700 people show up and you are there from 3-8pm, that works out at 2.3mins per person. It's absolutely ridiculous and this is aimed at all 6, not just you two. Are you putting any money in it yourselves?
Unfortunately as 700 people are coming, we can no longer hold meet and greets outside for free as Rose and I have done a few times before (although it is much easier and quicker to plan!) because if you have over a certain amount of people you need to buy a license, contact the council and get it approved, notify the local police and yadahahahaha all very long winded and complicated and much likely to get rejected.
So we decided to hire a venue, and the venue had to be in London because that was the only place we could all get to, the easiest place for the people attending to get to. The cheapest venue we’re looking at to hold 700 people is £5000 for just four hours. So the only way we could materialize thousands of pounds for a venue was to charge for tickets and ask for donations.
I don’t feel guilty asking for a donation, because a donation is just that, a donation. It’s not mandatory, if people don’t have money or aren’t going, they don’t have to donate. I have been too busy working 12 hour shifts every day to pay off my debts to check the donation page but I am aware of one lady who donated extremely generously but who isn’t attending, and this is because she told me personally that Rose and I helped to save her life, so for her, donating is only a token of her gratitude.
Don’t know where you got 3-8pm from, that may be a rough estimate on the RSVP (I didn’t create that and it was only a rough guide) but we are going to do much more than just briefly have a photo with people. We’re already planning games, competitions, giving out prizes, a Q&A session as well as a meet and greet. So 2.3 mins per person is absolute balls. We’re also planning to get inflatable bananas, because, well, why the hell not?!
Rose got her white board and pens out and we’ve been having Google hangout sessions in which we all come up with amazing ideas to make this great for all attending. How would it benefit us to take donations and then host something that is shit? Not only would we get a bad reputation and no-one attending our next meet ups but believe it or not, we actually CARE about meeting people. There are some people coming that I owe a massive hug!
In summary, I can understand how taking donations looks strange when you think that all we would be doing is having a photo with someone for half a second, but I can assure you that the money will mainly be spent on a giant venue and the rest on entertainment for the people arriving so they can have fun (and us too!)
And finally, the question, ”Are we putting in any money ourselves?” Well a three hour trip to London, a hotel, prizes for people, food and drink for all, payment of staff, payment to get the whole day filmed, music, taking time off work, three months before hand of planning and the deposits we’re putting down to secure all is in place, yeah I’d say we’re putting in our fair share of effort and money for someone who works 2 jobs and is in a huge amount of debt.
I hope this explains a lot! Also there is a video coming when the Venue is confirmed which would say all of this!
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