Ten (or 12) steps to a great office opening

Six and a half years in business and we just had our ribbon cutting!

Our (relatively small) office was packed with more than sixty people. The evening was a whirlwind event that we’d spent weeks planning. Now that it’s over, we are pretty proud of ourselves. Our new office was FILLED with people who have been on this business journey with us: clients, former clients, business parters, friends, family, and the business community. We are so thankful for everyone who came and helped us celebrate this milestone.

What goes into an office opening?

There was so much planning and visioning to make the event what we had wanted. The 10 steps we followed for a great office opening were:

1. Food (understated yet elegant cheese platter and colorful plates of sweets),
2. Drinks (bubbly, wine and beer),
3. Spotify music (which was quickly drowned out by the noise of everyone talking),
4. Decorations (bright sunflowers and cheery balloons),
5. Arlington Chamber of Commerce supplied microphone, big ribbon and bigger scissors,
6. Name tags (stick on; colorful w/branding),
7. Invites (free, paperless post),
8. Cleaning (hide our boxes and organize our papers),
9. Last minute office set-up (hanging bulletin board, framing our values),
10. Ice! (even though it was frigid outside, you can’t drink room temperature champagne!)
11. (Bonus) We pre-planned who was speaking, and made sure to print out our talking points in a large font size so that “we” (we mean Jennifer) could avoid wearing her glasses.
12. (Bonus #2 – what not to do) Photographer! In hindsight, we should have hired a professional photographer.While we got many great pictures and videos from a number of guests’ phones, we missed a great opportunity to capture pics with our clients and our team.

Now we’re back to work, doing what we love to help our clients grow and connect to their community.  But we’ve kept part of our nice red ribbon as a symbolic reminder of our fun and meaningful office opening celebration.

Check out our (admittedly amateur) pics from our office opening party on our social pages.