The Social: The Silent Auction

One of the biggest revenue generators at a social is the silent auction, especially if you have your prizes donated, rather then purchased, as you don't have really any expenses to cut into your profit...like you do with alcohol sales (which you might get 50% profits).

So the main thing my MOH K and future SIL T did on the day before the social was assemble the prize packages and wrap them up in baskets. (We took off work so we wouldn't be rushed on Saturday which was very smart since a few unplanned things came up on Saturday!)

We started with grouping packages in areas of our living room...

{MOH K and SIL T - neither like their pictures taken}

....And finished with the baskets wrapped and ready for transport the next day, in our dining room.

I also made up the price lists for the Grand Prizes and Regular Prize tickets to sell at the door, and laminated them. I talked with a few other brides and they all found that having Package deals were the preferred purchase of the guests.

{I have a finger print on my camera lens that I didn't notice until Sunday!

So the Grand Prizes are 4 for $5 and 10 for $10}

Here are the four grand prize packages that we had...

And these were the thirteen regular prizes...

We also had a door prize which was to encourage people to buy a ticket even if they couldn't attend...

The prizes were drawn at midnight and surprisingly almost 50% of the winners were my coworkers, probably because there was at least 40 of them there.

If you had a social had did your silent auction go? Did you do it differently?