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La Fête Sanguinaire
Our sixth Formal Historical Holiday Costume Ball La Fête Sanguinaire was a gothy Vampire and Other Creatures of the Night party to be held on March 7th, 2009. The party was held at The Tacoma Mountaineers Club.
Thank you so much to everyone who attended! You were all absolutely beautiful. I hope you had as much fun as we did hosting the event.
You can read the Exquisite Corpse horror story that our guests composed here and about the Vampire Hunter Kit prizes here.
The Inspiration
Emily says... La Fete Sangiunaire was intended to be our sixth Holiday ball in December 2008 but various terrible things happen which caused it to be rescheduled at the last minute for March 7th, 2009. The change was not all bad, as it allowed us to use a fantastic new venue (the Mountaineers Club in Tacoma) which was larger, closer to many of our guests, and a little more well-suited to our needs. As a result, decorating and cleanup took far less time than usual.
The theme was Vampires, Werewolves and Other Creatures of the Night.
Tyler says... I am continually amused by the coincidences that allow us to improve on our first five years' worth of parties. The First Formal Holiday Historical Costume Ball became the Victorian Technological Exposition; The Decadent Dinner Party transmuted into the Firelight and Fantasy Frolic, and the FHHCBII:Faux Mournful lives on in the FHHCBVI: La Fete Sanguinaire. Plus Emily was obsessed with Twilight.
The Set-UpThe Mountaineers Club is a great venue. It has an outdoor area with a climbing wall that could very well be the ruins of Dracula's castle. Outside, we put some purple lights in a tree and it became a smoker's lair. Cold, but functional.
Technically, I considered the smoker's lair a werewolf garden, because throughout the whole planning process, we sort of ignored the dogs. Luckily, our guests did too, so it wasn't a big deal.
Inside, we found that we actually had enough black, red and purple fabric to cover almost all of the walls of the hall. This was very effective.
Might I add, incidentally, that attaching fabric to cinderblock is a pain in the butt?
The short wall at the end of the hall is wood, so we left that alone. This place has a stage with a bit projection screen where we would show public domain horror films (Nosferatu and Haxan, both highly recommended) which worked out great after a last-minute projector exchange. There is also a huge fireplace which we filled with clouds of white tulle lit by purple fairy lights. It looked like a glowing mist, or maybe just a pile of purple glowing tulle. Near the fireplace, we set up tables for people to eat and sit. This left a huge area for a dance floor/game area, surrounded by more tables and chairs.
Of the score of custom decorations begun by myself and others, only the coffin archway and the Grim Death figurine saw fruition. At the end, we only wanted to take one truckload of material to the hall, and that was what we could fit in the truck.
Our music worked out wonderfully. We had backed it up on an MP3 player and burned cds, and had an abundance of extra cables and speakers in case something happened. Nothing did, and the music was great.
The coolest part of the set-up, though, was thanks to an out-of-the-blue offer from Michael of Haunted Hearse Northwest to have a real coffin at our party! Now Tyler had been working on making a prop coffin that we could take pictures in, but a real coffin is about the coolest thing we could have. The coffin added a great bit of decoration but the coffin photographs were an even bigger hit (as you'll see most of the pictures were of folks in it, and we even had a WEDDING in the coffin, as guests Stacey and Kevin exchanged rings and signed their papers in the coffin!) Michael also parked his fabulous hearse, Rose, out in front of the hall. The reactions of some of the passers-by on the sidewalk were pretty priceless.
I must agree that the coffin and hearse made everything else pop. Without them, we would have been a slightly sad high school dance. With them, we were fabulous.
The Food
About a week before the event I saw food grade pig's blood at a funny little asian market, and I was really gunning to have it at the ball. Unluckily, we were unable to navigate our way back there, so it fell through.
I also wanted to have garlic-stuffed garlic nibblies, a la Nanny Ogg in Carpe Jugulum. However, that would have been disgusting.
Food was pretty standard for this one (cheeses, crackers, bread, fruit, vegetables, various dips and spreads.) The themed food included brain jello, Werewolf Treat cookies, and bloody punch. We were sure to label all of the food to make sure that the vampires were able to avoid any garlic.
The Entertainments
Aside from coffin portraits, we had a few successful entertainments. We began with a small dance lesson early in the night to teach folks to Waltz and to dance the Virginia Reel. We had done the Virginia Reel (and called it the Sir Roger DeCoverly) at our Regency party and it was great fun. After teaching a few people early in the night, we did it again later on. That time we had so many people we had to have two sets, or else the dance would be so long we wouldn't have finished before the music ended.
If you wish to attempt the Virginia Reel yourself, look it up on Youtube, and you'll have ample material to work out how to do it yourself. Might I suggest having a caller, though? A second hint, as well: One Winged Angel, from Advent of Children, works well for this dance, as it has a clear 4/4 beat, but is slow enough for people to be able to dance to it.
We also had shocking public domain horror films playing continually throughout the night, which added to ambiance and provided an icebreaker for some particularly recalcitrant guests.
There were also folks dancing on and off to the music between other official entertainments, which is always nice to see.
Another physical game that made use of the wide open dance floor was "The Preternatural Knot." This game is exactly the same as "The Human Knot" but with a more fitting name. This one was so much fun that it was played twice in a row!
We also had a costume contest. For our last few events, it seems that we forget to give out our prizes so we made quite an effort to actually have a costume contest. Our first place winners were Michael the Undertaker and Captain Kat, who each won a handmade Vampire Hunter Kit with holy water, garlic, a mirror, a silver cross and some other stuff. You can learn more about the kit here. Our second place winners were Count the Count and a horde of particularly terrifying vampire hunters with their dog, Scout. Good fun.
Our other entertainment was a game of The Exquisite Corpse (wherein a person is allowed to read only the last line of an in-progress story and then contribute to it themselves.) The game was passed around during the party so that anyone who wanted to contribute to it would have the chance, and then toward the end of the night it was read aloud. The text of the story that we came up with can be found here.
Conclusions
I think this party was a big success. The venue was perfect, people looked fantastic, and the coffin was great. We couldn't actually decipher the exact number of guests because the ticket-checkers seemed to have different methods and some tickets were paid for but unfortunately not used, but nearest I could figure it was about 70.
There is a possibility that this was our largest event yet, and even if it wasn't, it was without doubt our second largest. I can also say, with confidence, that it was our most successful.
Our t-shirt/jean ratio was down to 1-70, incidentally, and that one was our cook. That's as near to success as you can get!
If you'd like to see all of our pictures from this event, rather than just the smattering available on this page, there is a photobucket album here,
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