I know my last post mentioned the subject of balls, but this one is about an actual dance – the Scottish Ball – hosted by our church.
There were so many details that made for a lovely and memorable evening.
Beautiful dresses.
(thank you, Goodwill!)
This is the 5th year of the ball, and each year, we have managed to find a nice selection of dresses at Goodwill. The bonus this year was that the Saturday we went dress shopping just so happened to be half off everything in the store day. Yes! Rachel wore the same dress that she did last year, but Courtney & Erica’s dresses were new, plus we got one extra one that we couldn’t pass up. At $6 per dress, who could?!
Well-fitting, beautiful dresses.
(Thank you, “Express alterations”.)
So, when you find lovely dresses at a steal less than a week before the Ball, you go ahead and buy them … even if they need to be altered (a few sizes down in Erica’s case). Unfortunately, altering gowns is not included in my top three talents. After looking up tutorials online, making initial attempts at altering them (didn’t get any farther than pinning), and talking with a couple of friends who are more knowledgeable about such things, I ended up biting the bullet and taking Courtney & Erica’s dresses to a professional seamstress for alterations. That was an adventure in itself! The only alteration shop in Lebanon was closed until November. This shouldn’t be too hard, I reasoned, if there is a seamstress in our tiny town, there must be plenty to choose from nearby. The good news: I found plenty nearby. The bad news:
- one seamstress had temporarily left her shop when we stopped by, with no obvious signs of returning before we needed to head back to pick up Rachel from her piano lesson;
- we never found the shop that we heard was supposed to be near the one with the missing seamstress;
- another would take several weeks to send the dresses out to the seamstress and have the work done;
- one seamstress literally hung up on me when I told her when I needed the dresses to be ready.
So, by 2 days before the Ball, I’d just about resigned myself to doing the alterations myself. I ended up finding another shop and decided to take the dresses in just to ask for advice on how to do the work myself. The sweet lady not only said she could do it, but that she could have the work done by the next day. So, that led to some last minute trips to and from the shop for a fitting, but it was all worth it, as the dresses fit perfectly!
Fancy Hair.
(Thank you to my co-stylist, Rachel! actually, I was probably her co-stylist. ;-)
Last year, we did a twisting technique to create very curly curls (but needed at least 6 hours of setting time) and I bought baby pink carnations, which were very pretty, but difficult to attach to the girls’ hair. This year, we heated up 2 different sizes of curling irons, Rachel tried out some unique twisting, and I bought Baby’s Breath – much easier to pin into hair! We were very happy with the results.
Fancy Food.
If it were nothing more than lovely people, dressed up, dancing to live music, the evening would still be wonderful. But the “icing on the cake” is the fun, fancy food that everyone brings. It is a little challenging to come up with food that is fancy but not messy (chocolate is out!), but I’m always pleasantly surprised at the variety of delicious, fancy foods brought to the Ball. I wish I would have taken pictures of each table. There were several and each one was as lovely and full as this one! It’s the little things can make an event feel very special.
The boys.
Who says it’s only fun to dress up girls? Thanks to Once Upon a Child, we were able to find suits for Grant and Trent and boy-oh-boy, did they look handsome. ;-)
Mi esposo.
Let’s face it: if Mick hadn’t been there, I would’ve only been able to take about 5 pictures. :-) I told him early on that my main goal was to be able to take as many pictures as I could. He helped me achieve that goal by taking Trent (aka my perma-attachment) off my hands on several different occasions. At times, it was tricky to take pictures and stay out of his line of view. In fact, in these pictures, he had just spotted me across the room. :-)
Good friends.
Toward the end of the evening, I was talking to the musicians. One of the violinists was smiling while watching all the kids dancing and said “I haven’t seen kids have this much fun since I was a kid!”
We’re so thankful for this opportunity each year to spend time with these families on such a special night.
