My Last Month @ Aston (Grad Ceremony Prep)

May and June have not been all parties and tears, you know; I had a graduation to organise and having in mind the fact that I am from the Balkans, my graduation closely resembles getting ready for a big fat Greek wedding. I have my parents and sister, aunt and uncle, cousin, husband and child all attending my graduation. So, there were a few thing I needed done.

1) Make sure parents and cousing have rooms booked in the Aston Business School Hotel (since the price they offered me was epic)

2) Make sure that aunt and uncle (who changed their mind a hundred times as to where they will sleep) also have a room booked in the ABS Hotel.

3) Make sure plane tickets are booked and paid for

4) Ask for as many tickets as you can for the graduation ceremony (that's, at least initially, 2+2)

5) Book robe and hat

6) Reserve seats after receiving the 4 tickets you asked for

***7) Extra tickets go on sale, book more! With the extra tickets I now have six guests due to attend the Birmingham Town Hall ceremony.

8) Book a car to pick up from Heathrow airport

9) Book a place for dinner the eve before graduation

10) Book a place for dinner the eve after graduation

11) Discuss with family as to what they want to do apart from the ceremony (with my family, they wanted to spend a week in London, adding the additional item of agreeing on a hotel in London, and extra activities)

There you go people, if you have a big fat Bulgarian family like me, these 11 items are most probably going to be unavoidable. Then again, it is great to have your whole family attend your graduation ceremony. In this trail of thoughts, I was incredibly lucky that booking the Town Hall seats was really easy and that the ABS hotel desk was kind enough to answer a dosen e-mails from me :)

Now let's see if next week goes by plan.