"Sleeping Beauty Dress" and Spring Formal...

It's done.  It's FINALLY done.  After working and stressing for over a month, my formal dress is finished and I can sleep in peace without worrying I made the sleeves too tight or the sash too wide.  It's a good thing too, since I needed it for the Spring Formal Ball we helped host this Saturday! We had to put a lot more effort into this dance than the Masquerade because we had more people coming and *SIX* more dances to learn. And these aren't waltzes, friends, these are complicated dances such "The Hole In The Wall", "The Black Nag", and (my personal favorite) "Grimstock".  They're a lot of fun to learn and dance, but lets just say you need to not plan on walking anywhere the next day. =)

This was my first formal dress to sew, the material alone cost a fortune, and since I don't use patterns, you can imagine my stress level.  I'm convinced my Guardian Angel was working on it while I was asleep, because there were several times I messed up and gave up in despair, only to wake up the next morning to find the problem had disappeared.

My brother said I looked like Sleeping Beauty when I put it on for the first time; hence the name.  We had brought roses from our garden (everything seems to be blooming at the same time!) and when my photographer brother noticed how well they matched my dress, he had to take a picture.  Next thing you know, every one of us girls were lining up for portraits.  With all our satin dresses, the tulle, and roses, it looked like a wedding.=)

The ball was a hit; everyone had a lot of fun and we had two or three encore dances before we ended at 10:45.  All of us got to volunteer our talents to help out; I decorated and and helped come up with the program, one of my brothers was the DJ and edited most of the songs to make them long enough for the dance (one dance lasted over ten minutes because it was everyone's favorite!) and the other recorded videos.  My friend and I were exhausted by the end of the night as we had to dance every dance to show everyone else the steps but agreed we could probably have continued dancing all night and not been sorry. Thankfully, I had new slippers to slip into towards the end so my feet didn't ache nearly at all the next day! Afterwards those of us who had stayed to clean up had a "Cups" marathon for fun...

(^I'm not sure why this picture turned out so blurry; it looked a lot better on the camera^)

As you can see, we like to have fun.=)
Now that the Ball is a pleasant memory, I plan to do nothing but rest and study brain health for the rest of the week...