Well it’s the week after one of our biggest annual events and I’ll bet you’re thinking I’m going to write again about how terrific the Sweetheart Wine Walk was. And because I don’t want to disappoint anyone, here goes.

You’d think with all the rain we had on Friday and Saturday, it would have put a damper on the attendance.

But truly, we almost hit our recording breaking numbers of last year when we had about 2,500 people downtown.

Now that may not seem noteworthy when you compare it to our parades or bridge lighting attendance where we can host up to 15,000 downtown, but when you consider that the 2,500 are not standing on the sidewalks, but are in the stores tasting wines and having fun after dark, I have to tell you that this is the stuff which inspires my happy dances.

Plus an interesting side affect of the rain was that it kept folks milling around in the stores longer than usual. I heard several post event reports that all that milling translated into sales. How great it that?

I know I’ve reported before that my favorite part of events is the conversations with the crowd.

There’s a reason I’ve gained a reputation for talking a lot. I’ll admit it comes pretty natural to me, but some might be surprised to learn I do have a strategy for all that jabbering.

Plus, I enlist others to jabber as well and collect visitor information so that we can utilize the data for improved events, communication, branding implementation and downtown promotions.

My fellow jabberers at this event included Mayor Enslow, go figure, Carmen Palmer, city communications director, and Bill Pugh, our public works director, who welcomed the crowd and helped with registration.

Even our interim city administrator Diane Suplar attended and wandered through the wine tasting sites to listen and observe how events impact our downtown. And, of course, Police Chief Galle was there to keep an eye on things, as well as give me a bad time.

In addition to the city utilizing our events to capture information and statistics, our true-blue Heritage Bank volunteers were back to help at registration. They’ve got registration down to a science and love to collect visitor data as well.

Combine that with the talents of the Ascension Theatre Production cast and their interaction with the crowd, and we end up with a pretty broad range of information and statistics to digest and utilize.

This year we also had volunteer help from the Puyallup/Sumner Chamber of Commerce, the Sumner Lions Club, and the South King County Colts minor league football team to help at the event, plus Windmill Gardens generously offered to provide free primroses for our visitors.

There was also a fun volunteer party afterwards to celebrate another great wine walk.

Sorci’s provided the food and Windmill owner, Ben DeGoede (or as I like to call him, Float Meister) hosted the party at the Windmill. Truly, not only are our events fun, but in Sumner the volunteer parties are a hoot as well.

Stay tuned as we debrief and report the data collected. It’s interesting to learn about and fun to share the information that keeps me reporting about why people like to spend their time in Sumner.