Sunday, August 9, 2015

Costume College! Part 2

Saturday was a pretty quiet day for me. I started the day with Elizabeth's excellent ceili class, which was so much fun, and such a great warm up for the day! I was feeling so energized that I was ready to tackle some classes, only to find that there weren't really any going on that I was interested in attending. So, I poked around the costume exhibit, spent most of the day lounging around, and caught up on a bit of sleep. By 4 o'clock I knew it was time to get ready for the gala, so I started attempting to get my hair into something vaguely 18th century looking, which took about three tries. I finally got it to work by making a pincurl at the very top of my head, anchoring a small curled hairpiece to it, teasing my own hair, and brushing it up around the hairpiece. It did the trick, and I covered any flubbity spots with sparkly things and feathers.

I finished dressing just in time to get downstairs to the red carpet line of doom. I wish I had a photo to show you all the sheer madness of that line. It was a loooong way into the gala, but posing for pictures was fun. (The upward angle is not my friend, but at least the dress looks great!)

Costume College 2015

I did feel rather sorry for those that just wanted to get to the gala and bypass all the madness. They were trying to squeeze past the line along the walls and getting griped at for cutting, and then once you actually reached the red carpet area there was absolutely no way to get around it, so they had to walk on the red carpet, which caused more griping, even though they just wanted to get through it all and get to dinner.

Once I got inside, I found a seat with Josie and some of her companions, which turned out to be a really fun table. Josie's mother in law was absolutely adorable, going on about how wonderful Josie was and how much she loved her, as if she was her own daughter. She teared up about it at one point, which made me feel all wubbly. It was so sweet.

After dinner I found the rest of the court gown group and we congregated in the red carpet area for a big group picture. We were so floofy! So much silk! So much sparkle! I really can't wait to see the pictures that pop up from that, because we were freaking fabulous. This is the only picture I've found so far, but there are bound to be more popping up soon!


I was really glad that everything on my gown fit like it was supposed to. I didn't have a chance to try on anything before leaving, so it was a big mystery whether or not I was going to even fit into it! There were definitely a few trouble spots that I'll have to go back and rejigger, but at this point, the gown is finished, it fit, and nothing fell apart, so I win!

Here are a couple of photos taken by friends:

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I headed back upstairs not long before the party closed its doors. I was insane and decided to do a wet set that night so I would have nice curls the next morning for Breakfast with the Bennets. I just love the look of a mass of curls framing the face and the rest of the hair hidden in a cap. (I've become so obsessed with caps, ya'll, I'm not even kidding. I want ALL THE CAPS.)


My roommates originally intended to join me at breakfast, but they decided they like sleep better, and just slept right through the alarm. They didn't even know I'd left the room until they woke up and I wasn't there. XP I did get down to breakfast pretty early, right when the time was supposed to start, and I ran into Jen, so we breakfasted together. It was really nice and relaxed, and I loved seeing everyone in costume invading the restaurant. But, OMG, terrible service. The buffet was fine and the food was delicious, but they completely forgot my waffle order, they never came to our table to see if we wanted drink refills, it took forever for them to give us the check, and when they finally took our money they gave incorrect change! Yeesh. At least the company was good, and we had some interesting people at our table.

After breakfast I hit the bargain bazaar where I picked up a really lovely tone on tone red damask, a pink linen, a calico, a teal cotton, some silver satin, and a bunch of black lace, all for $5! It was great. I dropped everything off in the hotel room before going to Ginger's gathers and pleating class, which was really informative. I've never tried stroked gathers before, but now I really want to give them a shot.  Afterward, I headed to the Mantua-making class, which was spectacular. The ladies were really eager to answer our questions, and then they draped a polonaise gown like it was no big deal. I took about 8,000 pictures of the process. Here are a few, but there are many, many more on my (new!) flickr.

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Nicole passed around the polonaise gown she had been wearing before they started draping, and we were all able to have a close look at how it was constructed. After seeing them drape it and examining how hers was put together, I'm dying to make one myself.

After the Mantua-maker class I went to Kendra's 18th century hat class, but left it early to be able to make it to the tea. The tea was probably the most disappointing event of the weekend. I didn't get to sit with my friends, so I was at a table with strangers, which is normally not a big deal, but the conversation was...less than stimulating. And we had the snootiest waiter they could find, too, and I hated the fact that they didn't have a pot of hot water on the table like makes sense, but you had to flag down Snooty Waiter and have him pour you another cup. Terrible service seemed to be the theme of the entire week! The waitress at the gala was awful, too, completely ignoring us when we asked for water, slamming our plates down on the table, reaching over two people to pick up someone's empty plate, it was atrocious.

Anyway, the rest of Sunday was quiet after the tea. I didn't make it to the Garment District shopping trip on Monday because of budget issues, so I stayed in the hotel room and tried not to bounce off the walls with nothing to do. Our flight home was on Tuesday, so we got there early because LAX is a chaotic joke, only to find that our flight had been delayed four hours. And no embroidery or hand-sewing to keep us entertained! We did eventually make it home, though, and the flight was uneventful after we finally were given a plane. XP

I'm glad I finally managed to make it out to CoCo. I've always seen pictures and wanted to go, and it was just as fun as I expected. I probably won't be going next year, though, since the 50th anniversary of Star Trek is next year, and Vegas is promising a really spectacular shindig. XD I guess it's time to start working on some prosthetics again!

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