Behind The Scenes of A CAB Meeting

By: Shyann Pegram

CAB Student Leaders. Photo Credit: CAB Instagram.

When you think about fall lawn, semi-formal, formal, and spring cocktails, what do you think about? Is it the outfits, the drinks, the food, the theme… or do you think about all the time spent thinking, designing, collaborating, and researching to make these parties spectacular?

As a CAB member, it is your responsibility to help create the DIYs, decorate, and clean up. Starting at 9:00PM, CAB members spend every Thursday night making the decorations for the events. They spend anywhere from one hour to five hours gluing, cutting, spraying, taping, among other creative duties. Craft making is not the only thing that gets done at a CAB meeting. No DIY is a one-person job and CAB works in groups talking, playing music, laughing, and just having fun. While sleep-deprived at times, community is created and shared. 

When one event ends and the next theme is announced, CAB begins discussing what they would like to try to achieve at the next event. This is the research portion. Specific members take the time to look on Pinterest for inspiration and create vision boards. These boards help with the marketing portion, creating ideas for flyers, emails, buttons, and other aspects of social media advertising. Then these CAB members move to Amazon and look for decorations, backdrops, and anything that fits the theme. All of those picks get run by the treasurer just to make sure we stay on budget while still trying to create an immersive experience. When that is all said and done, it is time to buy supplies and begin the DIY projects at the next meeting!

When crafting, things can get messy. There are scraps of cardboard and paper everywhere, and people running around trying to find scissors, tape, and even hot glue guns. Crafting is always the fun part of the meetings. CAB members get to watch their crafts that start from nothing but a piece of cardboard or paper become incredible decorations. Typically each DIY project takes more than one day. The photo booth at Fall Lawn took the entire time between getting the theme at the third meeting and the night before Fall Lawn. This involved taping boxes together, drawing the figures and the head holes, cutting them out, and then finally painting the characters and backdrop. No matter how long it takes you to complete your DIY you can always get help from others members, or start something new. 

Being a CAB member comes with certain benefits such as getting one free guest to the events, seeing decorations early, free merch, new friends, fun memories, getting to let out your creative side, and getting to keep decorations from any event you would like. If this sounds like something you would enjoy, reach out to a CAB member or the CAB president and try to get a spot as a part of the CAB family. 

The next time you attend one of the CAB events, take some time to appreciate all the decorations and the time spent putting the event together. Without CAB, these events wouldn’t be the same.