forum event organisation

i am running a competition at the moment, with prizes of a weekend ghosthunting (very appropriate, considering its a paranormal forum), and i need some way of sorting out who is coming and getting information to all of them.

maybe i think the best idea is to create a section of the forum, only seen by the people who are coming-maybe put them in a group or something with permission to access that part of the forum.

now i need a way to know which members are which when we get there, as there will be other people coming on the event who are not forum members. im thinking of making little badges for forum members, so we know whos who, maybe a place where we can meet when we get there, although i would first need to look up the hotel we are staying at or something to work out a meeting point.

i also need to find out which members have not won the competition but are paying for the event using the special offer i posted (i can get the information for who used the special offer code thingy i posted from the other guy organising the event) and make sure theyve all paid as well

wow, a lot to think about when im running something like this

any other things ive missed out?

 

We had a convention several years ago and made the landyard/badges with a space reserved on it for 'forum name/title'. Of course we had cute little titles for each.

 

yeah, that will make it easier to tell who is who will see what i can do