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Thursday, November 15, 2007
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Oh—my soul! That was—so much fun!
For months now, I’ve been working on a period dress to wear to an 1864-style ball. I’d been planning accessories and matching shades of white like an interior decorator. :-) The dress was made of midnight blue satin with strings of pearls swagged with white roses around the skirt. I hadn’t time to fashion a hoop skirt myself, but thanks to ebay, I easily acquired one with an adjustable waist and adjustable fullness in the skirt.
I used thirty-seven (!!!) covered buttons and bridal loops down the back of the dress. I am never doing that again. Period. I would rather use hook-and-eye closures or eyelets with laces, but never that many buttons again.
I found white elbow gloves at Claires for $12 and a beautiful, soft white wrap at Kohl’s for $12 too. My sister lent me the jewelry she wore as a bridesmaid to my cousin’s wedding, which went beautifully with the blue of the dress. (Then she said I could keep them, since she never wore them anyway. I love them!!)
I even decided to go with period “underpinnings” since they’ve become popular again and easy to find. The shoes were a little more expensive than I would normally have paid, but they’re so adorable and Danny Davis is a persuasive talker. J They are incredibly uncomfortable, however, and after five hours of dancing, there were red marks where my shoes used to be.
James picked out a pattern from Vogue for a very formal vest, chose fabric colors and had me make his vest. It came out well, but I hated that pattern. It was unclear in some of its instructions, and I had a hard time of it. But it came out well, which is the important thing, and I finished it with covered buttons. He found a really great deal on gloves, hat and cane from the After Hours formal store at the mall.
I searched high and low for a cravat pattern that actually resembled the ones they wore back then, specifically the ones like Mr. Darcy and Mr. Knightley wear in the productions of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice (A&E version) and Emma, respectively. Such patterns are impossible to find. Therefore, if you are interested, this link was helpful. I did not end up using it as a pattern, but more as a guideline.
Daniel created his own look. He had planned on making use of James’ store of vests and costumes, but when I got a call at noon on Saturday to inquire what color I had made the cravats, I knew he had found something else. He showed up looking very dashing in a tuxedo and red vest. Guys are so lucky. Their formal fashions really haven’t changed significantly in the past century-and-a-half. The fellas both looked great. I’d say they were definitely the two best dressed at the ball. :)
Okay, so dress complete, I went to have my hair done. I’d have done it myself, but I wanted it curled. (Yes, I can curl it myself, but my hair is long and thick. It would’ve taken forever and my arms would have been very tired from holding that curling iron high over my head and holding it there. I’m sure you girls know how irritating that is.) So I went to have it done. The girl curled it, and put it up in pins. I didn’t like the style, but it was pretty and it’s how they wore it during the 1860s, so I was happy with it. Then I went and picked up some fudge to take to the party. I didn’t have time to make it and the last time anyone at my house tried, we ended up chipping it out of the pan with a knife. Not good. So I bought it to be safe.
James arrived from the airport and, at the same time, Daniel pulled into the driveway. So we all got ready at the same time. Mom took some pictures of the three of us together. They came out kind of blurry, and you couldn’t really see the dress since we were standing behind the couch, so we took some pictures again later.
It was tough stuff learning to sit down in a three-hoop skirt. If you don’t lift the back of the dress over your seat before you sit, you end up seated on the back of a rather inflexible set of metal hoops. Try it some time. You’ll know what I mean.
That said, it was even more difficult to sit inside a car. I knew I would not be able to drive, so I handed Daniel the keys and placed myself in the back seat. It took a couple tries to get where we were going, and we were rather late to begin with. We had to go back after reaching the blinker light in Shiloh because we forgot the fudge. Then I had to call Dad to make sure my directions were good. But finally we arrived to find that the waltzing lesson hadn’t even begun.
They handed out dancing cards for the girls, each with a tiny pencil attached to write the name of your partner. I had to explain this novelty to Daniel, who had never seen them before, but by the end of the evening had written his name on at least nine different cards. He kept giving me advice, telling me that if I wanted a partner, I had to stand at the edge of the dance floor with my card in plain view. I laughed at him, but he was right. The first dance that I didn’t have a partner, I did as he said. Sure enough, a young lad of about fourteen offered me the next dance.
James and I danced most of the waltzes together, (We’re becoming very good at it. You have to practice with the same partner if you want to improve.) until it became apparent that, though you may secure yourself a dancing partner, it doesn’t mean you end up with the same partner.
We danced something called a Broom Waltz, which means that everyone on the floor has a partner except one man, who dances with a broom. When the music stops, everyone changes partners, and the man with the broom must find someone else. If you don’t find a partner, you end up with the broom. The instructions were not clear at first, and so James and I kept with each other, and Daniel with his partner, until it was clarified. Then it became interesting. Some of the boys simply danced with each other, leaving several of the girls to find partners themselves.
I danced the Gothic dance with Daniel, which I had seen done many times. James was right next to us in the set with a girl of about thirteen, whose name, if I remember correctly, was Tina. It was great fun. It’s the kind of dance you see on P&P and S&S, where the couples at the top dance in a set, and then sort of gallop down to the bottom, where they work their way up again. We had eleven couples in our set and there were two other sets, so we figured sixty-six people just on the floor.
We played a game, which I can only entitle A Lady’s Favor as they offered me no other name at the dance. It is played with three chairs and a lady’s favor, in this case, a fan. Most of you know the history of a lady’s colors or favor, given to a knight before going to battle. Though chivalry is veritably lost today, the fan represented the favor in this game.
A girl sits in the middle chair with a gentleman on either side. She holds a fan, and accepts compliments and flirtations from both men. When she has decided which she prefers, she hands her fan to the rejected suitor and a waltz down the room ensues with the other.
Rejected suitor moves to the middle chair. Two ladies are seated on either side, who are then compelled to vie for the favor of the gentleman seated. We might call this game Shameless Flirtation if we were to call a spade a spade.
Some of the compliments that the girls rejected, I was appalled at, either that they rejected such compliments, or at the conceited audacity of the gentleman bestowing them. For example, I never would have rejected someone who told me that my beauty was like a song, or that to describe such beauty was impossible and only set one up to make a fool of himself. And I never could have believed the self-importance of one young lad who told his lady fair that “if he weren’t there, she’d be the hottest thing in the room.” —Whoa. I mean, really.
But then, the girls were really just as bad. I was forced to admit that Daniel had gorgeous blue eyes, while the girl next to me really had nothing to say in favor of his beard. (I suppose the tastes and preferences of a fourteen-year-old must differ greatly from those of a twenty-four-year-old. Really, how could I lose against such a comment?)
One young lady, who had never played before, could not think of anything that might be considered a universal compliment, and yet, still gain the favor of any given gentleman. I told her there were lots and gave her some examples, which of course, I could never list here, for it would be to betray secrets of which men must know nothing. After all, if I were to tell which compliments I shared with her, it would rob them of their credibility. And certainly, they are often true, if they are widely so. :-)
After all the appointed places in each lady’s card had been filled and danced with their respective partners, most of the party-goers sat down to rest or started to file out. I sat with Daniel and let my toes curl unshod. A few die-hard dancers were going at it hard and fast to a lively tune. They seemed more to be jumping than dancing, putting one in mind of the post-ball dance in Rogers and Hammerstein’s The King and I, where Anna and the king dance energetically around an empty ballroom. It looked like too much fun to pass up, and so I turned to Daniel and asked if he was too tired for one more dance.
If I thought he would be tired, I was greatly mistaken. That young man comes alive at nine o’clock and not before. While I was mostly concerned about stepping on my own hem, and avoiding an embarrassing tumble, he swung me around the room incorporating bell kicks and apparently having more fun than he’d had all evening. It’s a good thing I had taken off my shoes. I never would have remained upright through the song.
When we arrived at the house, my mom heard all about everything. Now she wants to come to the next one to watch. I told her I’d make her a dress, but she doesn’t want to come in costume. :) We’ll see. |
posted by cori
11/15/2007 07:16:00 AM
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| The ShugaBowl |
| Sounds like some kind of sports thing, but in reality, the ShugaBowl is just a little hideaway for me, Sugarcube herself, to let loose my thoughts and occasional creativeness. |
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