The trick with these types of threads is to
never move forward to the public until
everything is done. All the votes should be counted and all the posts should be formatted long before the reveal of the nominations. Same goes to any mega thread, countdown, or game. People seriously underestimate the amount of time it takes tallying up items, scrounging through PMs, and formatting posts. All of that should be completed before moving onto the next step. It's something we all have to learn when hosting a mega thread, though! My first Secret Santa was rough.