One of my favorite markets, I returned to Marietta the Gathering for their fourth year! Hosted by the city of Marietta itself on the historic square, this festival celebrates the geek community, pop culture, and arts!
The Applying
As a previous vendor, I got an email in October from Emily Zillweger, Marietta’s Special Events Coordinator, that applications for Marietta the Gathering 2026 would be opening up soon on the city’s website. Applications opened early for returning vendors on October 26, with applications opening to the public on October 31st.
Only a few hours after I completed their online form, I got a confirmation email for 2026! With my booth fee paid of $100 we were good to go.
The Pregaming
I didn’t hear from Marietta again until December, when we were emailed about their annual t-shirt contest. Every year, the artists vendors are invited to submit designs which’ll be voted on by the public to become the official Marietta the Gathering t-shirt. I considered it, but at the time, I already had a lot of obligations to finish up, including the Gather them All stamp rally!
My friend Molley of Molley B Art, reached out to ask if I’d be interested in joining a stamp rally again. It went very well last year so I said yes! We joined with Kafaid and Stiltskin’s Cupboard to form a spring themed Pokémon card stamp rally. Any customer could collect a stamp from us after making a $5 dollar purchase, and if they gathered all four stamps they’d win a prize pack with our four Pokémon cards!
As we got closer to the date, there was some trouble with Marietta city emails going to spam folders. I didn’t even realize I had gotten my booth number and event details email until a couple of friends suggested I look in my spam. We got our maps and load-in load-out instructions in early February, as well as an invite to the vendor meet-and-greet on February 28th at the Boxwood Social Hall.
A week out from Marietta the Gathering, the weather forecast was fairly ominous. It kept shifting from cloudy to stormy, even by Friday it seemed 50/50 on how it would go. As a rain or shine show, it would only be cancelled if the Public Safety Commission deemed it too dangerous to continue. With that in mind, I simplified my tent setup in case we did get rained out. That meant no large prints, and no cool paper dragon lantern decor. It did really bum me out because I was hoping it’d be her debut!
The Gathering
I showed up to load-in bright and early around 7:30. It was pretty straightforward as it followed the same procedure as previous years. I rolled up to the barricade with my booth number, pulled up to my spot, and unpacked my car as quickly as possible before driving off to park. There were plenty of officers and event organizers in bright safety vests to direct vendor traffic.
By the morning, the weather forecast said cloudy through the day with storms starting at night so while I was hopeful for good weather I still put up one of my tent walls to prevent potential water damage. Although I was assigned a corner spot, I decided to go with a Z rather than an L layout so more of my merch would be covered by my tent just in case.
And perhaps it was good fortune that I had been working on ways to slim down my outdoor setup to minimize wind damage. Since last year’s Marietta the Gathering was notoriously windy, and my booth was placed across from a street alley again, I wanted to avoid tall and light displays that could be swept up as sails.
So that meant no pink cubes towers. Plus, I’m not sure why but I find grid and cubes annoying to work with so I was happy to be rid of them. I relied on my wooden displays for prints and stickers, which are heavy enough to resist being blown over. As for my foam board displays for charms, I strapped them to their metal easels and then tied 5 pound gym weights in the back. It was my first time using this method and it seemed to do the trick, I didn’t have trouble with my foam boards the whole market.
Without my pink cubes that did mean I was sacrificing my pinback button display method for this outdoor setup, so my hope was by placing my button trays in the corner spot it would help direct attention to them. And it seemed to work out pretty well! Since I do organize my button trays by series and topic, browsers still seemed to have a good time identifying the buttons they’d be interested in even without a vertical display board with most of the designs listed. Which, is good to know as a potential source of saving table real estate.
Around 9:40 I decided I had enough time before opening at 10 to do a coffee run and headed over to Cool Beans, which already had a line out the door! I thought I was safe because the square was pretty empty when I left it, but when I was back just a little late for opening around 10:10 there were already lots of people milling about!
The morning was a strong start, within an hour I’d already made back the table fee. Sales continued to climb steadily through the day, peaking around 1 PM and then dropping in the evening after the rain. The crowd was so busy I was only able to leave my tent for bathroom breaks thanks to my sister’s helper, Louie. I missed out on seeing the rest of the gathering, but it’s a good problem to have!
Our attendees were a mix of families with children and young adults. Plenty of dogs, some of them even in cosplay. There were also the regular Marietta Square visitors, I did get a couple of “they had no idea this was happening” comments which does surprise me a bit since this is Marietta the Gathering’s fourth year! Ha ha. I did also see a lot of familiar faces, both neighborhood friends and returning customers!
Interestingly, I didn’t really notice a stand out item category in terms of sales, and it seems just about every price point did very well. Kids really enjoyed my Deltarune and Digital Circus buttons. I was surprised to run out of Mr. Tenna and Jax buttons. My You-Gay-Ho sticker was also a bestseller and sold out in the afternoon.
Marietta the Gathering was the debut for my new Sweet Scale Lolita blind box charms with six new designs: pacman frog, poison dart frog, white tree frog, tomato frog, and sand boa. With the success of my Lucky Snake charms last year, I wanted to see if repackaging my Sweet Scale Lolita charms as a blind box would help them sell. I did notice there seemed to be some hesitancy with a blind box set of 12 designs, but when that did happen I was able to direct the customer to my vinyl sticker versions of my Sweet Scale Lolita which can be picked out for purchased.
Our “Gather Them All” stamp rally went pretty well! Molley, Kafaid, and I ended up in the same island together while Stiltskin’s Cupboard was on a different side of the square. So I usually ended up being a middle stamp giver, with how traffic was flowing… or maybe it was because… I didn’t have as much Pokémon stuff so it was less obvious I’d have a Pokémon stamp rally? Oh no! Was I the weak link? ovo; From the sound of it, we were able to give away all our prize packs! It was… actually a little scary because we were only halfway through the event and messaging each other in our group chat about who did or didn’t have prize stock left ovo;;;
The Raining
The first rain hit suddenly around 5 PM.
Just, sploosh! There had been grey clouds passing by through the day and finally we rolled those dice enough to get rain. Attendees took refuge into buildings or nearby tents, such as mine. Since I had arranged for my setup to be within my tent, I was able to avoid most water damage. The end of my front table did get a little wet from rain pooling on top of the tent and then splashing down. I had to use my snake hook to try and push the tent out just a little to keep the water from flowing onto the edge of my table. Fortunately, all of my vinyl decals are protected in plastic, so only my wooden display was in harm’s way.
The rain did pass after 10 minutes or so. People still hung around afterwards, but I think the weather dampened the shopping mood. Even so, I didn’t leave my booth much since I wanted to keep an eye out for more rain.
As we got closer to evening the weather forecast was stressing me out since it predicted storms at 8 PM, which was right when we’d be closing. A few vendors packed up after our first rain, but had to walk all their belongings back to their cars since we weren’t allowed to load-in early. I decided to play it by ear and start packing my own booth up by 7:30 at the latest. However, it didn’t end up being my call because around 7:00 officers came around to let us vendors know our market was closing early!
At first I was super relieved that we weren’t expected to stick it out, but then it turned out despite closing an hour early we still weren’t allowed to bring our cars in until 8 PM! I think the reasoning was that there were still pedestrians loitering about, and… strangely a music performance was still on at the square stage as we were packing up… I’m not sure why we were given the safety clearance to pack up but the musicians weren’t?
Since I did finish tearing down my booth before 8 PM, I decided to make a wagon run to my car a couple blocks away. It would take make me at least three trips, and sadly, by the start of my second trip it did start to rain again! Heavily. (The music definitely stopped after that, ha ha). Fortunately, I did prioritize getting my merch dry and loaded, so all of that was protected. And, for my last trip I was able to just drive in with my car since we were finally allowed to! Geez!
My car wasn’t quite as soggy as Athens Pride, but it was pretty close! I stopped by Chick n’ Wok’s drive thru for my victory dinner, General Tso’s chicken, chow mein, and crab rangoon.
Billie’s Vendor Rating
Marietta the Gathering remains one of my favorite local shows, despite the rain! Weather is always a risk with outdoor shows, and I think Marietta puts enough effort into communication and marketing to make it well worth it. There was some weirdness about how our market was closed early without us being allowed to load-out early, however I’m not sure if that was on Parks and Rec, Public Safety, or who else!
The crowd Marietta the Gathering draws also just really fits my niche as well. I’d recommend it for any Atlanta area artist who also has a nerdy aesthetic. Maybe even anyone within the state of Georgia!
| Foot Traffic | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Attendee Vibes | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Restrooms | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Pokémon GO | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Organization | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
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