[ldelzer]

I would find out how much is going to cost to rent the venue. You will probably have to have event insurance, which can be very expensive. I pay around 500 for 4 days for my children's consignment sale. OUCH! Most places will not rent a room without proof of insurance first.

Renting space will (probably) not be cheap. I would not be surprised to find out it will cost you 1000-1500 to rent some space. (or more). Last Spring, I rented around 4,000 square feet (which is not that much!) and it cost me 3,000 for 4 days.

They may charge you to drop extra power strips down. It costs me 50 bucks per extra drop. I may end up having to pay 300 just to have extra power sources for my kid's sale.

Most places are going to charge for chairs and table rental. They may also charge for "after hours" usage. i.e. anything outside of the typical rental agreement.

To be perfectly honest, I think that this is a first time run and we need to be as frugal as possible. I would see if we can have a block of rooms, accompanied with some "work space" where we can spread out and do our thing. I would try very hard to not have to rent space. I would invite vendors FREE of charge. They will spend a good chunk of change to even come down there. They will feel ripped off if they come down and there are 15 attendees. If you don't have to rent space, this may save the event insurance.

I would also be frugal because, whether it's nice to say it or not, people have a way of backing out. You may have 100 say that they will for sure come. When it comes to crunch time, 1/2 of those are going to not show up.

Sorry to ramble. It's a huge undertaking to do something like this. It's bigger than most folks would think.