The First Formal Historical Holiday Costume Ball
Inspiration:
 Emily says: The First Formal Holiday Costume Ball (or the FHHCB, as it would be known,) was devised back in August or September of 2003. The idea was originally to throw a Victorian ball as a going away party for Tyler and John, who would probably be leaving for Alaska in early 2004.
Tyler says: The idea for the 1st Formal Holiday Historical Costume Ball was purely to throw a
Formal Holiday Historical Costume Ball. The name really says it all. We really just
needed a suitable exuse, which came in the form of a job opportunity. In Alaska. In
a fish processing plant. After all, what better way to celebrate going to work in
cold, wet, smelly conditions at the end of the earth than throwing a Fabulous
Pseudo-Victorian Ball?
Set-Up
Tyler managed to find the perfect place for the party, Hale's Pass Lodge, owned by the Pierce County Parks Department (therefore only about $25 to rent for the night.) It was built in the 1930s by the WPA so it's very sturdy and rustic looking:
The Lodge is actually a nursery school during the week, and we had full use of one of the large rooms, a smaller room, the kitchen and restrooms. We decorated with Christmas lights and trees (four of them.)
The entire building only had about three electrical outlets, so lighting was difficult but not impossible. There were lots of folding aluminum chairs and tables (we covered the tables with "Linen Look" paper tableclothes.) and garlands and pretty fabric covering cubbies and such. It didn't look at all like a school.
We found what was to become our "old stand-by," purely by accident. My Mother had
rented the facility for my Grandfather's 80th birthday a few years prior, and she
kept talking about how very cheap Hale's Pass was. And, as young persons without
much income, that was a key factor.
Once inside, fabric masked the blackboards and various other preschool-artifacts.
Icicle lights hung from every exposed wood beam. A long table was at the near end of
the hall, set with my grandmother's china, for ten.
Dinner We decided that the party should begin with an intimate dinner for ten, and follow with games and dancing for more (it ended up being about twenty.)
We intended to have a private "family" dinner before the Ball properly began.
However, our waitresses didn't show up until about 45 minutes into the hour-long
meal. Also, after-dinner guests began arriving earlyy. Between greeting guests (and
stowing them in the Green Room in the back) and serving supper ourselves, Emily and
I got a bit frantic. As we pushed our tables to the side of the room and layed out
the dessert buffet, we braced ourselves, and smiled graciously to welcome ALL our
guests to the Ball.
The dinner for ten consisted of bread with herbal butter (margarine mixed with "Italian Seasoning") and garlic, salad, cream of potato soup (just add water,) pasta, sauce and meatballs (frozen.) It was entirely inexpensive. Dessert would be a buffet.
For beverages we had hot cider and hot water for tea and cocoa (no one had the cocoa!) as well as Punch:
The punch was made of frozen juice concentrate, sherbet and lemon-lime soda. It was the only thing we ran out of, and Tyler's recipe because he is wonderful.
The timing for this party was planned rather poorly, as we only allowed an hour for dinner (which is fine, practically, if dinner starts promptly, but the beginning of dinner was when people started arriving.) Besides that, the "help" didn't arrive on time (so much as forty five minutes late) so Tyler and I had to serve the first few courses ourselves.
The other guests (the non-dinner guests) started to arrive as we finished dinner, so they were escorted to the smaller room to entertain themselves as we pushed the dinner tables to the side of the room, changed the table clothes and laid out a dessert buffet on them.
Chairs were moved around the room and the huge wooden doors to the hallway were opened, welcoming the other guests.
In the future, should we have a partially-exclusive party, it ought to be planned with more time between the exclusive bit and the larger bit.
Games
We played a number of games, most of which Emily describes much more accurately than
I could. I shall only say that Poor Pussy sounded MUCH more entertaining than it
actually was, and leave it at that.
Of course, no one can dance. Instead, the evening was spent playing party games: here, Yimmy has lost a round of Hunt The Slipper and is made to "act straight."
A dessert buffet and mingling filled the breaks between the games: Hunt The Slipper started the night off, as it's quite a successful party game in general.
Next, from a list Tyler contributed of Victorian Party Games, Poor Pussy. Poor Pussy is a game where someone acts like a cat and the guests have to say to the cat, "oh, poor pussy" and not laugh. It wasn't very successful. It tried to become, "try to make people laugh in any way at all" but that didn't work too well either.
Treble Clef is a game where a person sings a line of a song and the next person sings a line from a different song that uses the last word in the previous line. This game was moderately successful, though slightly dull.
Next, we decided to throw together (at the last minute) a makeshift scavenger hunt (as there were all sorts of strange things in the building.) Just for fun, we added a few annoying rules: 1) No one could write down the list. They all had to come back to the main room to read the list if they forgot an object. 2) All members of a team must be touching at all times. 3) All members of a team must see each object. Of course the teams had to have coaches to make sure they didn't cheat. The running up and down stairs holding hands, looking for rocking horses and sad chairs, was quite amusing for all involved.
Silhouettes involved casting a shadow onto a screen, for the rest of the guests to guess who the person was. The guests split into two teams for this and one team would be in the hall (with the door to the hall covered by a screen) while the other team guessed who each silhouette was. Bum rolls, hoop skirts, top hats and pregnancy made the game quite interesting.
The last official game we played was pictionary, which was not so successful, due in part to Stacey's guest's obscure car references, and in part to drama, drama, drama.
After the party, I made a handy list on the board, documenting how each game was received.
Once the games were exhausted, there was more chit-chat. We sat in a circle talking about The Worst Things We'd Ever Done and telling various stories from long ago.
Then it was very late and people started to leave. Courtney and Julie stayed around to help take down decorations for a little while, but then they left too and for hours and hours Tyler and I took down the christmas lights that lined every joint of wall to ceiling, all the moldings, and the rafters. We washed dishes, took apart christmas trees and folded up the tables. Then we put up the chillun art and uncovered the cubbies. The school furniture went back into the room and the glitter disappeared. When we finished it was probably around three. We were miserable and tired. It was totally worth it.
The party lasted until about midnight. It was a success. The cleaning up was not so fun. We packed what we could into Tyler's blazer and came back in the morning for the rest.
Conclusions
Success! While our very first Christmas Ball was not as fantastic as we dreamed, it
was more wonderful than we had dared to hope.
And, frankly, we were hooked.
We learned:
To allow more time to eat
To have prizes for games
Parties are expensive!
It was such fun that we decided to perhaps make it an annual thing. We did one better than that, and had the next one the following June. Fabulous Parties have only gotten better!
Because we didn't realize what this event would become, we didn't take a lot of pictures and the ones we did take were with disposible cameras. You can see a few more at the photobucket album for the party.
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