Fantasy Fest? LAME!

As some of you may know the reason I haven't been active lately is because we were having a big event at work called Fantasy Fest.
Fantasy Fest was a two day Sci Fi and Fantasy Festival in which we were hosting a charity raffle and fun raiser for a non profit organization called Project Ignite, the fund raiser was to help them send a group to Ukraine to work with Orphanages in that country.
We were going to have the 501st out to help us promote, some artist there and a costume contest.
It wasn't going to be a big event, but it was going to be fun!
Also the book store connected to the coffee shop I manage was having one of their biggest sales of the year the same day. Sounds like a no loose situation right?
WRONG.

To start off this tale we must start at the beginning. Back the second weekend in January we had a small comic signing event with a local comic book author, we got to tossing around ideas with him about fantasy and scifi things that would go over well for our venue and the idea for a Fantasy Fest came up.
At first I was a bit wary, us a small coffee shop, put on an event that some might confuse with a minor con? No gracias, I thought. But the owner of my store talked me into it.
He didn't know I was a huge nerd, so he thought it would have been a stretch for me to get some nerdy people to the store- I wish I'd let him think that.
Instead I rose to the challenge.

I hooked up with a friend of mine who is part of the 501st to see how I could get them out there to promote the event, and what charities would be good to work with.
I should have known this thing was doomed to fail when I tried hooking up with the battered women's shelter. The place is a great non profit, which great people and a great cause- their interns just don't know how to return phone calls.
After three weeks of phone tag I was approached by Project Ignite with their non profit, and I jumped on the task because they had all their info ready.
It was all set, I was ready to go to the 501st. By this time it was mid February.
Now any one in the nerd community that has an eye for costuming will tell you the 501st is where it's at. Not only are they a set ready costume guild their sponsored by Lucas Film it self!
And lucky me, I had an in. My friend in the 501st was on the ball ready to be the rock star of the whole show.
He was working to get the event on the forums, and I was submitting by the 'request and event' form and then it was time to sit back wait for the members to roll on in and come by.

Now I could finally commit to working on that charity raffle, getting prizes and working on promoting that portion of the event.
Now I won't pretend I was every day at every store and on the phone all the time, I am currently working on getting my GED (I'm not a drop out, it's a long story, yes I already complete highschool I just don't have a diploma) which is taking longer than I wanted, I'm also the manager of the store, and in charge of not only hiring new staff, but I am the sole person training them. Then to top it all off I'm working on starting my own humanitarian project, (causeandeffectjapan.org) so needless to say I'm very busy and I haven't had a single days rest in over a month.
And a week before I had to hand that over to the founders of Project Ignite.

Now here comes the fun part of the story, the super duper fun bit.
A week before the event my friend in the 501st calls me- and tells me he's moved to Texas. It was a quick move and he was very good to still be working on the event while being a dive instructor teaching 4 classes a week and doing 30 hours of office work, but he wanted to know how many people had signed on for Fantasy Fest out of the 501st.
And then I panicked.
You mean all this time people hadn't been talking with him about Fantasy Fest!? It wasn't generating any attention at all!?
The gnawing feeling that this event wasn't going to work out began to sink in.

All last week I've been making calls, emailing people and texting my little heart out to get any one from the 501st to help us promote this event. Mean while the owners of the book store we are connected to begin to raise HELL, mother loving HELL with us about everything in our store, the way we're set up, our paint, our selection- the fact that we're not buying pastries from the SAME SUPPLIER AS THE BAKERY IN THE SAME STRIP WE ARE IN!
And who get's to hear this ear full on nonsense? Me, if not from them then a retelling of it from the owner.

So now I have:
no prizes for the raffle,
no one showing up to promote the event,
and 2 angry land lords who want to shut us down
Sounds like a recipe for a great event right? =_=

Well Friday night rolls around. The day before the event and only one 501st guy is coming and he's not even wearing his own armor. He's having to borrow my friends. After staying up until 2am trying to convince people to come I gave up, I had to get up at 8 the next morning any way to start getting ready for the event.
Also did I mention this was supposed to be an outdoor event? I woke up saturday to a horrible rain storm- like you wouldn't believe.

Saturday morning the guy borrowing my armor is the only guy from the 501st there. He was a nice guy but you could tell he didn't want to be there. I had to pin him into the armor because it was made for some one 8inches shorter than he was.
He left about 3 hours later, not that I blame him but before we even announced the raffle.
I could see it on every ones faces then, but I had to force my self to remain optimistic- This day was a bust.
Not only was the book store making my artist move their work 'out of view' but they set up a food stand with hot dogs right out side of our door! Because of the rain people kept bringing their outside food and drink into our store and not buying anything and taking up tables making our customers stand.
It was like every one was wanting us to fail!

Sunday was our close out day, and my some miracle my friend calls me and tells me to text another guy from the 501st. This kept me up until 2:30 am me trying to get him there and he (a married man by the way) flirting his way around the subject.
Sunday morning I wasn't even sure if he was coming. I told him the night before that we would be slow until about 3 or 4 and he showed up any way at noon.
You could tell all morning he was pissed, he was stiff he wasn't talkative and he was short with everything I said or did.
He left at 2 on the dot.
And even though we had mildly pleasant good byes and 'keep me updated of future events' he proceeds my friend to send my friend a text about how unhappy he was with my event. How it was a 'non event' and that 'I was a nice girl, but had no idea what I was doing' and not to bother calling him with favors like that again, he was only going to show up for 'board posted events'.
I was humiliated.

Like I said around 3 we packed the place out, and the event did it's job.
It told people about our store, it got the information about project ignite into the right hands.
But still with all the obstacles I faced I can't help but feel I failed.
I'm not looking for a "Oh Hannah, your doing your best" kind of patronizing comment.
I'm to exhausted to care, I know I did my best, but I can't help but feel like it wasn't good enough.
It pisses me off and it makes me hate to even think of dealing with this kind of event again.
We're supposed to have another fantasy fest in fall, but I'm not even sure I want to try after today.