Waterdhavian Social Season

Winter

• The fierce Northern winters essentially shut the city down. As of the first blizzard, snow usually lies thick on the ground, and cruelly cold winds rush in off the ocean to lock the city down.
• Most nobles flee the city entirely during the winter, preferring to lock down their opulent villas in favor of country properties that are much cozier, or even for holdings in warmer, more southerly lands (most families of Tethyrian blood maintain houses in Amn, Tethyr and Calimshan, as well).
• As a result, while the Guild of Street Laborers works diligently to keep most of the streets of the city snow-free, the Sea and North Wards are basically left to snow-over (with the exception of the High Road and major roads).

Spring

• Fleetswake (Ches 21st - 30th): Generally speaking, the Spring Social Season begins with Fleetswake, when winter has let up enough to allow ships to return to the Waterdhavian harbor. Many noble families return during this week, taking rooms in inns while their servants prepare their estates for reinhabiting. By the time of the Highcoin, the nobles have mostly all returned.
• Fair Seas Festival (Ches 29th - 30th): The returning nobles make their presence known to their fellows with elaborate Fair Seas Feasts. Those Houses that retain a strong presence in the city have the upper hand in these plans, for they're in place to arrange their feasts and send out invitations to those nobles who are just now getting back into the city. The nobles also make a point of preparing to contribute to Umberlee's Cache in extravagant ways during these parties, which are the favorite scene for the cache collectors to take up offerings from the noble Houses.
• Highcoin (Ches 30th): While the rest of the city is focused on the Fair Seas Festival, the nobility take the Waukeenar festival of Highcoin very seriously. Lord Piergeiron's Highcoin Ball is an absolute necessity for those intending to be on the scene this season - if you miss it, you're an afterthought at best for the rest of the year. The coin that is traditionally gathered on this day is gathered at the door of the ball.
  • This ball is usually accompanied by accolades on what the nobles contribute to Waterdeep's prosperity by the Open Lord, myriad Guildsmasters and other personages of importance. This event begins at sundown, and most of the nobles make sure to be at the sinking of Umberlee's Cache as the true beginning of this festival, lining the shoreline in their finest garb, and then promenading to the Palace afterward.
• Waukeentide (Tarsakh 1st - 10th): The nobles of Waterdeep take the merchants' festival very seriously. This entire week is filled with parties of all sorts; Waterdeep's nobility see it as a sort of "leaping into the deep end" to get back to the social whirlwind of the city.
  • The nobles turn out en masse on the second day of the festival, Caravance, to shop at the newly-opened Market.
• Spheres (Tarsakh 10th): The final day of Waukeentide is celebrated with grand parties.
  • The day begins with a gathering at Piergeiron's Palace, where the nobles gather to watch the glass orbs full of coin gathered at the Highcoin Ball be launched into the air after being enchanted to cause the glass to wholly render down into a harmless glittering dust upon impact.
  • After this spectacle and a shared warm drink courtesy of their host, the nobles break away to wander off to their myriad parties. It is considered to be something of a game among them to try and poach guests away from one anothers' parties at this point - you never know who actually is going to show to your Waukeentide party.
  • The parties themselves are always grand spectacles, the hosts attempting to make them enthralling enough so that guests don't go awandering for fear of missing something, while the guests frequently travel between the parties, afraid to miss out on any one of them. As a result, the streets of North and Sea Wards are filled with small clutches of traveling party-goers in their festival finery.
• Greengrass (Festival): Wreaths of fresh flowers - some wider across than a man is tall - adorn the front gates of noble villas at Greengrass. Though a few do enjoy pilgrimages to celebrate the holiday in the hedonistic revel known as the Lady's Revels at the nearby Chauntean abbey of the Goldenfields, the nobles of Waterdeep tend not to do too much on this day.
  • The main exception to this rule is with those families who deal in wine. These families (the Amcathras, Ammakyls, Melshimbers, Rosznars and Thanns) often hold open-barrel tasting parties, where the coming year's vintages are tasted to see how they're coming along before being bottled and sold. These parties are as much about business as they are about pleasure, with the families inviting various masters of the Vintners', Distillers', & Brewers' Guild, and various prestigious tavern- and inn-owners in attendance as well.

Summer

Summer is marked by a variety of important parties, balls and similar events. It is the time to be seen, and while it has the fewest traditional events, it is when each of the Houses try to make their mark on the season with a new theme, entertainment, patronage or other event that will set the tongues to wagging about them.

• Founders' Day Viewing Parties (Flamerule 1st): Some civic-minded nobles throw small parties in the very stands of the Field of Triumph, using their influence and coin to lay claim to one of the viewing boxes and inviting important city officials and other nobles to the festivities they host there. It's considered an old-fashioned event, however, even if the alliances created and influence garnered with various city officials makes it worth it.
• Sornyn Ball (Flamerule 5th): The end of the Waukeenar festival around treaties and envoys, this ball is thrown by Lord Peirgeiron as a welcome to the new diplomats to the city, and a welcome back to those who've been here for years. It is an opportunity for the noble Houses to get to know the ambassadors, and they do so with gusto, seeking the best possible opportunities for their families (and the city, of course).
• Midsummer (Festival): If the competition between the Houses for the best Spheres parties are playful and fun, the competition for the best Midsummer Revel is deadly earnest. The fortunes of some Houses have been made or lost by the alliances wrought at these events, and they're so serious that attempts by one House to disrupt preparations for a rival's party are not uncommon.
• Shieldmeet Ball (Festival): Every Shieldmeet, Lord Piergeiron throws a grand ball for Waterdeep, with the interiors of the Palace laid open for nobles and the wealthy, and a grand festival air in the courtyard in front of the palace. Room within is limited, and the guests within are always influential and important, so the jockeying to achieve a place within is intense.
• Divine Pageantry (early Eleasias): Another event considered hopelessly old-fashioned by young, fashionable nobles, it is the only holy festival to Siamorphe, the goddess of nobility considered the patron of all Waterdhavian nobles. As such, no matter how de rigeur it is, the wise patron or matron of House ensures everyone in their family is there to take part, dressed in fine antique garments, spreading coin and remembering the proper old fashioned forms of address.
  • Many young nobles (and not a few elders) spend the weeks before the Pageantry going over the hoary old documents that detail every proper title, honorific and form of address for everyone they are likely to meet on that day. A gaffe in these stilted forms of address is not just a social blunder, but an act of blasphemy against the goddess of nobility.