Tickets on Sale for 2024 Yule Ball – Don’t Miss Out!

The wizard activists of PDXpelliarmus are excited to invite you to the 2024 Yule Ball, on December 14th, 2024! The Yule Ball is an enchanted evening of well-mannered frivolity, celebrating our magical community, and doing some good in the world! Every year, Yule Ball gets more magical and we see a lot of familiar faces and love meeting new ones. We’d love to see you there. Tickets are on sale now, and you can purchase them here:

https://pdxhpa.betterworld.org/events/2024-yule-ball

Generally Magical tickets are $45. Champion’s Feast tickets are $105.

The Yule Ball is first and foremost, a dance! There will be music, themed cocktails, an expansive raffle, and a photo booth so you can capture the magic of the evening.

Wizarding attire or formalwear are strongly encouraged, and muggle street clothes may be subject to transfiguration. This event will be 21+, with NO underage wizards allowed.

Before the dance begins, we will be hosting the Champion’s Feast! Champion’s Feast tickets come with dinner, magical swag, and a seat at a table in the ballroom. Each table is named after a location in the Wizarding World so when you purchase your tables, your party can plan to sit together.

Got a whole Quidditch Team to bring? A limited number of whole tables are also available. Whole tables include eight Champion’s Feast tickets, as well as the option to name your table and decide where in the ballroom it will be located. Champion’s Feast Whole Tables are $850.

In the weeks leading up to the Ball, all guests will be challenged to participate in the Triwizard Tournament, a real-world competition designed to test your bravery, cunning, determination, and creativity. The winner of the Triwizard Tournament will receive a special award at the Ball!

This year, the Yule Ball is returning to the Mt. Hood Ballroom at the Sheraton Portland Airport Hotel. (An airport is a location where muggles gather to ride in large dragon-like flying machines, as they lack portkeys and broomsticks.) This venue features its own entrance, with bountiful and free parking, and lots of room for us to spread out in! Guests who like to dance into the wee hours will also be able to get discounted rooms at the hotel, so you won’t need to worry about apparition accidents or overcrowded Knight Buses. Returning to the same venue is also giving us the chance to really lean into transforming the space to make it as magical as possible. Expect some new wonders this year!

2024 Wizarding Weekend

We got away from the muggle world for a weekend of magic at McMenamins Kennedy School! Hosting activities in the Great Hall, vendors in Diagon Alley, Knockturn Alley, and Hogsmeade, PDXpelliarmus celebrated our favorite wizard’s birthday with three days of wonder and fun!

The Great Hall apparated into Kennedy School’s gym, where folks could sit at their House tables to enjoy a cold butterbeer, take their Hogwarts school portrait, and begin a hunt for escaped magical creatures! PDXpelliarmus presented trivia on Friday and Saturday and costume contests Saturday and Sunday. Diagon Alley, Knockturn Alley, and Hogsmeade were open Friday evening through Sunday, giving folks the chance to shop for magical treasures made by local artists and craftspeople.

Check out the photo album here!

Wizarding Weekend was free and open to the public, only requiring a ticket if you want to enjoy one of the movies in the Kennedy School theater, but PDXpelliarmus raised funds and collect school supplies! This year’s donations went to Rose Haven, a day shelter and community center serving women, children, and gender non-conforming people experiencing trauma, loss of home, or other challenges.

We all understand how lucky Harry was to find himself with a vault full of galleons when it came time to go back to school, and to have a safe place away from the neglect and abuse he suffered with the Dursleys. While we can’t make his story true for everyone in a similar position, we can make the return to school better for some, and help a program that supports them!

We collected almost 30 backpacks full of school supplies, and raised $3000!

PDXpelliarmus is an all-volunteer nonprofit dedicated to literacy, equality, and human rights. We stand with the Harry Potter fandom, and we believe there still good to be done in Harry’s name. We are committed to helping uplift and empower the transgender community as well as create safe spaces for all LGBTQIA+ people in the HP fandom.

2023 Yule Ball

The 2023 Yule Ball was truly an enchanted evening! Guests feasted, danced the night away, enjoyed performances by the PDX Dancing Witches and the music of DJ Switch, bought ALL the raffle tickets, and celebrated the new Yule Ball Triwizard champion! All told, they helped PDXpelliarmus raise $6,000 for Friendly House’s Elder Pride Services!

Thank you to everyone who attended! We look forward to another evening of well-mannered frivolity in December of 2024!

Check out the full gallery here: 2023 Yule Ball. Photos by No Rules Photography.

2023 Wizarding Weekend at Kennedy School!

We had another magical weekend at Kennedy School, getting away from the muggle world with movies, games, costumes, and so much butterbeer! PDXpelliarmus hosted book and movie trivia, costume contests for kids and adults and a Horcrux Hunt! Young guests helped us find wayward pixies! Artists, craftspeople, and makers filled our three vendor spaces with their own kinds of magic.

We did it all to raise funds and collect school supplies for Boys & Girls Aid, an Oregon nonprofit that serves children in foster care. Harry Potter fans proved again why they are the best people, bringing in loads of backpacks, socks, notebooks, pens, markers, and so many other items that will be going directly to children as they prepare to go back to school. Via cash donations and a raffle for a one-night stay at McMenamins Kennedy School, we raised $3,000 to donate to Boys & Girls Aid as well!

It was wonderful to connect with our magical community, and to see the joy that we can still find in the HP fandom while committing to creating open and inclusive spaces. We look forward to seeing everyone again next year!

2023 Hogwarts Early Admission Program

After a few years away, HEAP returned! The Hogwarts Early Admission Program is an enchanted afternoon of games and activities for all ages, this year held as part of our Accio Books campaign. Our focus this year was on celebrating the books that turn muggles into Wizards!

This year’s HEAP took place in the Gresham Library, where we rounded up a bunch of escaped pesky pixies, sprouted bowtruckles, took Hogwarts school photos, competed in a transfiguration exercise, practiced our cauldron tossing, and played a heated game of Wizards, Giants, and Elves. It was great fun, and an excellent chance to connect with our community and spread the magic of books.

2023 FanExpo Portland

The wizard activists of PDXpelliarmus brought the magic to FanExpo Portland! From our booth in the Community Zone, we played quidditch, posed trivia questions, and hosted sorting hat ceremonies. We tallied House Points as we went, and at the end of the weekend, awarded the prize to Gryffindor!

2022 Yule Ball

On Saturday, December 10th, PDXpelliarmus brought back the Yule Ball! Returning to our original venue, the historic Emerald Ballroom, the ball was an enchanted evening of well-mannered frivolity for a great cause! This year’s Yule Ball was a fundraiser for Q Center, Portland’s LGBTQ+ community center.

Guests enjoyed magically-themed food and drinks, dancing, and the chance to celebrate with their magical community! We saw performances by the PDX Dancing Witches. We hosted a raffle to raise more funds for Q Center, and awarded the 2022 Virtual Triwizard Championship!

With our guest’s support, PDXpelliarmus was able to raise $4000 to donate to Q Center! Thank you to everyone who joined us in making magic happen!

Wizarding Weekend at Kennedy School 2022!

What a magical weekend!

Once again, PDXpelliarmus teamed up with McMenamins Kennedy School to present Wizarding Weekend, three days of magical fun for a great cause!

Kennedy School showed all seven movies, Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley featured local vendors and artists, and we opened the Great Hall for activities like trivia, costume contests, and magical games!

In between all that fun, you donated 525 books to Children’s Book Bank! Those books went to CBB’s Building Home Libraries and Free Summer Book Fairs! We also raised $1,500 to donate direct to local teachers to help build their classroom libraries! McMenamin’s donated a portion of ticket sales from the movies to Basic Rights Oregon, in the amount of $5,752!

Thank you to everyone who came and helped us share the magic. We will see you again in 2023!

Pride is Magic!

Pride is Magic, and PDXpelliarmus went to Pride this year with the goal to celebrate our Pride, to connect to our community, and to raise funds for New Avenues for Youth. It was cold and muddy, but still full of magic.

2021 Yule Ball!

The 2021 Virtual Yule Ball was so much fun! There were virtual craft workshops, discussion groups, trivia, a movie night, music, a raffle, and more! The Virtual Triwizard inspired magical people to perform feats of daring and creativity to bring magic into the real world!

Between ticket sales and the raffle, $1,000 was raised for Color Outside the Lines, an amazing nonprofit that works to enrich the lives of children in foster care by providing them with creative tools and opportunities.