Over £6000 Raised at our Long Awaited Charity Summer Ball

What a wonderful evening! Delicious food, great music, dancing and lovely company. But, best of all, we raised over £6000 for our members chosen charities, The MS Therapy Centre and the Tibbs Dementia Foundation.

A huge “thank you” to all of our members who came to our sold-out Charity Summer Ball and contributed so generously.  We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.  We weren’t able to hold our Ball in 2020 and 2021, so this was our long awaited third Charity Summer Ball and it didn’t disappoint!  Even the weather couldn’t dampen anyone’s spirits despite a few downpours later on in the evening! And I think we were all glad it was a little cooler than the previous two days’ heatwave.

We started the evening with fizz and canapes in the Club Lounge before making our way into the beautifully decorated marquee.  Amy from April Flowers, one of the Ball sponsors, did a wonderful job with some striking table decorations and Ann Towers and Club Towers team with the marque decoration. Once seated guests were treated to an excellent three-course menu, plus a cheese board to finish. We’ve had some great feedback about the food, so thank you to our caterers for doing a sterling job on the night.  We must again thank our other sponsors who help us to make our ball cost-neutral so that we can donate as much as possible to the charities; our lead sponsor Barons BMW Bedford, Champneys, Lane and Holmes, Brooke Harris, April Flowers and Thinklab.

Thank you to Andrew Wilmer from Lane and Holmes for running a very entertaining auction. We are delighted to report that the six auction prizes raised £3,525.  Thank you to Brooke Harris Personal Tailor, Sam Vesty, Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company and Matt and Ann Towers for their donations and the members who bid on them to enable us to reach this amount.

A further thank you to those who donated raffle prizes. We raised a fantastic £1,340 selling raffle tickets with the chance to win some brilliant prizes.  Thanks goes to Champneys, Michael Baileys, LPH Concerts, North Beds Osteopaths, Quality Physios and from our own team Katy Randle-Henson, Caroline Alexander, Nick Boys, Garry Noakes, Mark Allen and Maija Bissett.

After the raffle and auction, we danced the night away until the early hours with people leaving with sore feet (and the onset of sore heads!) but happy hearts.

Sarah Russell from The Tibbs Dementia Foundation commented: “We are so pleased to hear you enjoyed a successful event. What a fantastic total you managed to raise – your members are so generous. Thank you for all your effort and energy raising funds to support the work we and the MS Therapy Centre do.”

We captured the evening with lots of photos which are available to view on a tablet at Reception, if there are any you would like to be sent, simply ask a member of the team and they can do so.

We already can’t wait for next year. Do save the date – Saturday 1st July 2023 – tickets will be on sale in the Autumn.