Champs this year could definitely have some creative things happening!
The swag bags last year were about 25% of the budget for the event. So it definitely makes up a large portion. Luckily a lot of the stuff that people really liked last year, I can make myself through MRC Ink, so I can just do those at cost and it will be a LOT cheaper.
Ribbons and awards are about the same, at about 25% of the budget.
The remaining 50% was used for judges, workers, food expenses, facility costs, travel costs, misc stuff like the vendor banners, purple curtains etc.
So depending on how things go, we might try to find a way to lower those costs a bit. We'll definitely keep everyone aware of what's happening.
Again a BIG advantage we have is that I have MRC Ink now, so anything that we normally would need to be ordering in June, which is anything customized like the bags, notebooks etc, those can all be pushed back a LOT farther since we can do them in house now. So I could wait to order everything until probably August 1st. So we have that at least.