Last week we celebrated our Queen’s Award for Enterprise: International Trade 2014 in style with a big party for all ITL’s European staff.
The Queen’s Award winners are announced each year on the Queen’s birthday, 21st April. Companies are notified beforehand but everything is in the strictest confidence, even staff cannot be notified until the official date. With a lot to organise I was privy to the information and everyone at ITL was told to save the date 6th June for a special event. Inevitably there were a lot of questions about what the party would be for and it was testing at times to keep the secret.
Finally, on the 21st April we were able to officially announce the Queen’s Award, our 3rd in the company’s history and I kicked the party organising into full throttle. The venue had been booked for months and it was now time to sort invites, table names, numbers, menus, gifts and music. Anyone who has ever organised an event will know that ‘final numbers’ constantly change but as the day of the party arrived the sun was shining and we were all ready for a good night.
We had just under 100 at the party to celebrate our Queen’s Award, with staff travelling in from Ireland, Spain, Germany and Russia just for the night. After a bucks fizz reception proceedings began with the official Queen’s Award presentation from the Lord Lieutenant of Greater Manchester and thanks from Chairman David Bellis and MD Aidan Towey. We all enjoyed a three course meal and then the DJ got everyone up on the dance floor, where we stayed until the early hours of the morning.
I’m reliably informed that I finally made it up to bed at about 3:45 am. My feet are still hurting now, a mixture of the dancing and the shoes I think, but we all had an absolutely brilliant night!
Dayna Patterson, Marketing Executive 12/06/14
A few images from ITL’s Queen’s Award Celebration Party, Friday 6th June 2014
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