Raise your hand if you think 2020 so far has been a proverbial drain pour.

We knew this year was going to be interesting when we needed to come up with a temporary location. Little did we know then that a global pandemic would alter reality as we know it and ‘social distancing’ would become a thing.

As of now, due to a whole slew of concerns related to COVID-19, the 2020 SIPtemberfest is cancelled. We are totally open to the idea of a group cheers or something online but we are not that savvy with all this Zoomy stuff and we can’t think that far ahead right now anyway. So for the time being, SIP is cancelled this year but we hope to be back in 2021.

Please read the below letter from our trusty captain and say a little beer prayer for us! We will be so incredibly stoked to kick it with you all as soon as we can!

Bonne Santé!!!

Dear Everyone,

Planning events is my jam. I love figuring out the puzzle of how to pull off the best beer fest/art show/wedding ever and nothing is sweeter than when I nail it. But this job is difficult and requires a lot of mental agility under ordinary circumstances. Now, in the wake of COVID-19, we face a whole new level of complexity and we are just starting to learn what that even means.

Event planners globally are scrambling to figure out what will become of our industry, (i.e. our livelihoods,) in the foreseeable future. But nobody really knows when it will be safe to hold large gatherings, what new restrictions and/or protocols will have to be initiated, what liability planners could face, and whether anyone will even feel comfortable attending events. I can tell you first hand that uncertainty of this scope is a logistics nightmare for any event planner. For a one-woman business like Meg’s Events, these unknowns are pretty much deal-breakers.

Sadly, this is all to say that the 2020 season of Meg’s Events is a big, fat, disappointing drain pour. I am cancelling SIPtemberfest, Bear North and probably the Moretown Artisans’ Sale too. My client events such as the Waterbury Arts Fest and others are also cancelled.

I have tried so hard to maintain my cool and not make rash decisions based on the massive dumpster fire of ‘information’ available out there. But after considering all the variables from timing and financial risks, to the health and safety of my friends, family and community, I feel the most responsible thing I can do is flush my 2020 event season and hope that the future has better things in store.

Man, I really hope I am able to weather this storm and bring Meg’s Events back to life next year! In the meantime, I will be navigating the waters as best I can and I hope you can do the same.

Please stay healthy and safe, and also be kind to each other! I look forward to raising a pint with you all down the road!

Meg

You guys!! We have news.

And by news, we mean big, big, important news!

Mad River Glen, our beloved and rustic home for 12 years, will be undergoing some much needed construction and renovations this summer. We have been working closely with the mountain to understand the scope of their plans and we’ve looked very carefully at all the ways this could impact our event. After a lot of discussion we’ve come to the conclusion that we are better off relocating our event for the year.

This is massive, we know. And we have not made this decision lightly. Mad River Glen is an integral part of our identity and we really wanted to keep our event on the mountain. But at the end of the day, we think the choice to relocate our 2020 event is by far the easiest thing we can do for everyone’s sake.

So we are excited to announce that the 2020 SIP will take place Saturday, September 26 at Kenyon’s Variety in Waitsfield. We decided on Kenyon’s for reasons similar to why we love MRG: this working farm is old-fashioned and no-frills to the core, and they are an independently owned and family run business. Since they already host several other events annually in their fields and they now keep a tent up all summer, we think this venue will be the perfect place for SIP to set up camp!

And speaking of camp, the spaciousness of these fields offers us a few exciting, one-time opportunities we wouldn’t otherwise have in the base area of MRG, like having artist booths and maybe even camping! Please click here to take our survey and help us gauge interest in these ideas… Plus one lucky entrant will win a SIP Hoodie & Hat! Your feed back will help us gauge all the options and make the most informed plans possible, so we’d love to learn what you all think!

Ultimately we plan to do what we always do – make SIPtemberfest the same but better! We still plan on having only one session, with about the same number of brewers pouring their delicious beer, and about the same number of attendees hanging out with that easygoing vibe. We will still have awesome food and killer live music. And we will still allow well behaved, leashed dogs and underagers!

We will announce all the event details before tickets go on sale, probably May/June-ish. This will include ticket pricing and start of sales date. As usual, we will offer a couple pop up ticket sales prior to the start of online sales, but we still have some tinkering to do before we can confirm this info, so stand by.

So please take our survey, follow us on instagram and look for more information from us in the spring!

Thanks as always for your continued support and cheers!

-Team SIP

We just wanted to reach out real quick and thank everyone who was involved in 2019 SIPtemberfest! Our sponsors were generous and supportive, our volunteers absolutely slayed it and our crowd was chock full of really cool, fun-having, beer-loving people! Oh – and the beer!! How awesome was the beer (and cider and mead and ginger beer and whiskey and vodka)!!??!! We were so completely stoked with everything this year, Team SIP needed a full week to recover!

Thanks as well to our photographer Erin Doble, our photographer, who brilliantly captured the day – check out her work below.

Finally, we will announce our 2020 plans in January so stay tuned – follow us on Facebook, Instagram our FreshSIPs!

Thanks again everyone and see you next year! Cheers!