Christmas Concert Stuff

Tomorrow is the Christmas concert at the church, so today was dress rehearsal day. Except that we weren't able to do an actual dress rehearsal; we just did a "this is the best we can do; forget about the costumes" rehearsal.

This year's concert has been a headache from the beginning, and yet I've been remarkably calm (although I've been accused of being stressed and upset, but that's just when I've been herding children into one spot and trying to figure out how to deal with problems; it seems that when I'm trying to do 3 things at once and I'm talking talking to 3 groups at once I seem stressed, even when I'm not).

Here's the issue: In October, I emailed the elder with the plans for the concert meeting, the practice times, and the dress rehearsal time. He told me that he would confirm with the other elders, and a few days later assured me that the times were all good.

What no one told me was....

1. The day of the concert meeting, we were going to have coffee/juice/cookies to celebrate the church's 11th anniversary and the installation of the newest elder/pastor, and that this would happen during my meeting. 
2. There would be a baptism the week of the first practice. They did give 30 minutes between the service and the baptism so that there would be time for practice, but since I also help back stage for the baptisms, it was a rather rushed and busy day.
3. They were going to welcome all the new members with a fellowship meal the day of (and the time of) the second practice. I gave up then and cancelled the practice.
4. The elder would forget to check that we could use the church for the dress rehearsal (we're not in our own building quite yet, so we rent another church for our services and other stuff), and we would show up to find that the other church was having choir practice on the stage, and that they had a funeral scheduled to start before we were going to finish.

So we had the "dress" rehearsal in the atrium, which worked, but didn't give us the right amount of room on our "stage", or the right amount of room for the wings so they know where to come on and off the stage, or the piano on the correct side. I know that last part doesn't seem like a big deal, but I had a hard time explaining to one adult how things would be for the actual concert. She was convinced that they children would be coming on stage on the side with the piano because they came on the side with the piano today. It was a very confusing conversation, and why would I confuse the children by having them come on the other side (also, the children weren't confused because most of them remembered how it was last year, and that hasn't changed).

We'll see how things go tomorrow. If everyone is on time (ha, ha....like that would happen), I'll have about 20 minutes to make sure the children know where to stand and the adults know where to send them on stage.