Wednesday night was a real treat for me...a rare night out at the hotly anticipated Love My Dress Soiree. Iwas so excited to not be at home in my joggers chasing after an increasingly curious 1 year old or working ( again in my joggers!) on my sewing machine/going squared eyed on the computer. Working for yourself doesn't offer too much time out! That said I was nervous to be going to this event quite blindly, knowing only a handful of industry peeps that were going.
This really didn't matter in fact it was the whole point of the event, to get to know others and have fun in the process. The wonderful world of twitter meant I was offered a car share with the lovely Michelle from Pocketful of Dreams. I met Michelle a while ago when I was doing my very first wedding fair and was thrilled when she asked if she could blog about my little old brand. You can read one of her lovely posts here. She is a local northern girl but it would appear that neither me, her nor her friend have any idea about how to drive in the northwest area given we turned south onto the motorway and ended up nearly at Alton Towers- the party was in Newcastle in case you were wondering. The next 3 hours were a little white knuckle and reminiscent at points of a scary taxi ride I once took when travelling in India as Michelle hogged the fast lane in an attempt to get us there in time. I can see why, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do when a hairdressing appointment is involved!
Slightly shell shocked I dropped some headpieces off with Abbie from The Vintage Hen House. Abbie runs a fab vintage hen party directory website and had organised a vintage inspired shoot at a local retro venue just before the Soiree kicked off. I can't wait to see the pictures.
Turning up at Malmaison I met my roomates for the night Katy Lunsford a friend and one of the fabulous official photographers for the Soiree. Cat Hepple also a photgrapher and widely acknowledged as having the best outfit of the night and Hayley from the Harrogate Wedding Lounge with the best false eyelashes I have ever seen.
The best move of the night for me was spontaneously deciding to get my make professionally done especially given how hot and sticky the weather was. A big thanks to Leeanne Bennett for doing my make up you did exactly what I wanted and took a big weight off my mind!
I had decided on a 40s/50s look and found a sequinned and pleated dress in a fab vintage shop down in Kent. I of course made a matching 40s style embellished headpiece in a dusty pink. My fave bit of my outfit were my back seamed love motif tights from asos.com as were my shoes. A good excuse to buy a new pair!
Tottering in very high heels over the amazing Millenium bridge ( I have to add I thought Newcastle seemed like an awesome city as I have never been before) we arrived at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts and were given name tags and a glass of champers as the Soiree was kicking off. I loved how the more we drank, the more we approached each other with a good old point at our twitter name tags first. Putting faces to names was definitely the goal of the night. I just wished I had talked to more. There was so much to take in, burlesque dancers, great music, yummy cakes, the snaparazzi photo booth, beautiful vintage props adorning every corner of the room and loads and loads of amazing dresses. It is good to see us wedding peeps are such a glamourous lot! I am pleased to say I made it to the end of the night still in heels but caved in and the ballet flats went on for the walk back over the bridge at the end of the night. My journey back was with Katy Lunsford and a double bass- some things are never straight forward!
Thank you Annabel for organising such a brilliant and decadent party. Sure, it was a networking event but it really did feel like a party. I was having so much fun I hardly took any pictures- gutted. And I left my goodie bag behind. Double gutted.
There have been some great reports of the night you can read Annabel's own here. WE are awaiting the full report on friday apparently!through here. Hopefully they will offer a lilttle light-hearted relief from the horrible events that have been on the news of late
http://www.lovemydress.net/blog/2011/08/the-love-my-dress-summer-soiree-the-people-that-made-it-happen.html
