After our trip to the London premiere of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in November 2005, we decided to do a bigger and better event for our second year. It didn’t take long to decide what that should be: a Yule Ball!
The Yule Ball took place on Sunday 3rd December 2006 at the Angel Hotel in Cardiff. We had a champagne reception, three-course meal, magician at our tables and not only was there much dancing to top the night, but were were also joined by members from the Sci-Fi, Pagan and Roleplaying and Wargaming societies, as well as the Harry Potter Society from UCL, The Unspeakables, who travelled all the way from London for the occasion!
The HP Soc committee would like to thank everyone who came – we couldn’t have had such a great night without you!
Speech
We couldn’t let a special occassion like this go by without giving a speech, which was presented by founding members and execs Julia Pepper and Sam Kenealy. Awards were also awarded to several members for their contributions to the society.
Julia: First of all, we would like to thank the Angel Hotel for hosting our event and for preparing such a lovely meal. We’d also like to thank our committee for helping the the organisation. Without our social secretaries, things could not have run so smoothly. So a big thank you to Jen, Carley, Kathryn, Natasha, Olivia and Emma. We’d like to thank Lauren in particular for giving up so much of her time with the Angel Hotel and with the other societies, so a big round of applause.
Sam: We’d also like to thank Meriel, Lex, Kim and Jankin for all their enthusiasm and support. We’d also like to thank their society members and, of course, our own, and everyone else here tonight for making tonight such a big success. So now we have a few awards to present. The first award is the Best Actor award. This goes to someone who enthusiastically managed to condense an entire game of Quidditch, including all playable positions, into a twenty second pantomime for the enjoyment of the society. Will Jon Mackrell come and get his award?
Julia: [Our next recipient] was voted best costume by society members at our Halloween bar crawl. Mrs Norris, also known as Clare Cauchois, come on down!
Sam: So our next award is the esteemed Hermione Granger Award for General Excellence. This goes to someone with perfect attendance, supreme efficiency and superb online savvy. She also won last year’s fanfiction and costume competitions and, this year, helped Ravenclaw secure first place in the theory competition with her contribution to the Gobstone eye theory. So, Natasha Radford, come and get your award.
Julia: Our last prize is the Colin Creevey Prize for Enthusiasm from the UCL Unspeakables. It goes to someone who turned up at their first meeting having read only the first Harry Potter book and announced that he was quite surprised because he expected to find a couple of weirdos in hats sitting around a cauldron. He was surprised to find that the society members were actually pretty normal. Well, most of them. Since then, he has become their keenest member and they are very grateful to him for driving half the society here tonight. Jason Penn, come on down.
Jason: (Upon recieving a copy of Chamber of Secrets) I can read it at last!
Julia: Now you can find out who Colin Creevey is!
[...] 2006’s Yule Ball madness, we decided to do it all over again. This time, a different location but still with the same [...]