Sakura Con: Masquerade Ball

The first day of Sakura Con was so packed full of things to do I thought I was going to pass out around lunchtime. But the Masquerade Ball was that night and I had to stick it out. I had spent a night earlier that week making my mask and it took all night. I had to wear it in public.

Finding dinner was a bit of a hassle with so many people around the Convention Center so we got back to our hotel late to get ready. I didn't have a problem because my getting ready was making my hair as big as possible and putting on clothes. I didn't have the money to buy a nice mask and I had even less money to buy a nice dress so I decided to go the opposite direction. For Halloween I had pieced clothes from my closet together to create a ragdoll look and I adopted that for my Masquerade outfit. Instead of painting my face I tore up old clothes to attatch to a mask base that turned out way better than I thought it would. (I'm not super visually creative.) Michi was stuck working all week so I had to do it myself.

Michi and Shelby had a lot more work to do. Michi decided to use her makeup skills to paint on her mask instead of buying or making one. She also cut her red wig to fit the occasion. But the real treat was Shelby in a long Victorian outfit and a small, green, somehow dainty Medusa mask that I didn't get any pictures of!

 Me

Michi

Shelby

It took us a while to find the right room but after a while we walked into a very large mass of people in masks and knew we were in the right place. Sort of. Everyone was kind of walking in different directions and eventually we just picked one and, after losing a member of our party to the chaos (she went back to the room and hung out with Adolfo) found the front door. But they were full. The line was huge to get in and they were going one for one. One comes out, one goes in. We got in line anyway and crossed our fingers. After getting in ourselves the line just continued to stretch on behind us until all we could do was be grateful were in the front half. It actually didn't take too long! But I worry a lot of people didn't get in.

The room was huge! The lights were low and surrounding center of the room, the dance floor, were rows and rows of chairs. We made our way to the back to sit at the tables and sort of take it all in. There were people everywhere. All dressed in different sorts of outfits. From super fancy to cosplay to Michi's very short dress. At first we played around on the dance floor. Shelby taught me how to waltz and I am not amazing at it but it was fun anyway. Then we decided to try an experiment. It was Shelby's idea. She wanted to see what would happen if we took a seat near the dance floor and watched. Would we get asked to dance? Oh yes. We did. It was so neat! Boys would just walk up, hold out their hand, and ask if they could have this dance. Yes. It was very fancy and so much fun. It was like playing dress up and pretending you were in a whole different world, like when you were young, only when someone asked you to dance they were real and you really walked out to waltz. I was even asked a few times by a very nice man with an epic name. (He was actually named after someone from Dr. Who. What a cool mom!) At first I tried to keep track of how many times Michi was asked to dance but it was impossible. She was very, very popular and with the ladies too. 

We stayed until the unmasking and then the last song before we finally shuffled, some of us shoeless, back through Seattle to our hotel room to collapse into our beds and dream about three-four time.

♥ Amanda Leigh