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Photo: Mary Anastasia Photography
Hello all! Long time, no post!
If I'm being honest, I could write a whole post alone based off of my lack of online presence recently. However, I'm choosing to keep things a bit more relevant to the theme of this blog by posting about my amazing community's most recent event! This year marks the 16th anniversary of Michigan EGL Society's creation, so to celebrate, some members of our community created this amazing event for us: Our Sweet 16 Anniversitea!
In the time leading up to this event, we had multiple fundraiser auctions within our community, with items donated from people's own personal collections! It was so great to see the efforts of our organizers and the excitement from our local community for this event. I really cannot express my appreciation for this group enough.
Photo: Mary Anastasia Photography
This highly anticipated event was hosted at Meadow Brook Hall, a gorgeous venue in Metro Detroit that I never had the pleasure to visit until this event! It was the perfect backdrop for our tea - gorgeous, ornate, and historical. There were so many spots to take photos, something I greatly appreciated! Speaking of photos - our organizers were even able to source an amazing photographer for our event through their hard work and our community's fundraising efforts! Here is the link to our photographer's website, if you'd like to support their works!
Photo: Mary Anastasia Photography
Our event officially began at 11AM, but we were invited to show up as early as 10AM to have time to mingle, explore the venue, and have our photos taken. Upon my arrival just after 10AM, I arrived to the room we had reserved and was checked in by one of our mods, Courtney, who also had a birthday we were going to celebrate a bit later! Upon check in, we each received a goodie bag, were asked if we wanted to enter the coordinate contest, and provided with our table assignments.
Photo: Mary Anastasia Photography
The goodie bag was such a sweet touch! It included a mask, an exclusive magnetic pin for our community, tea, some hand sanitizer, post cards from Lady Sloth, and a sweet booklet full of memories and appreciation for our community members. Take a look at my goodie bag haul below!
After getting to my seat and perusing through my goodie bag, I raced off to the side room where our photographer resided! Here's the amazing portrait/outfit shot I was able to get. (I rarely like how I look in photos, so the fact that I am so happy with this one speaks wonders about their skills!)
Photo: Mary Anastasia Photography
I wore my Miss Danger Royal Heart JSK, which was featured in a previous post of mine. The blouse is offbrand, the tights are offbrand (Vero Monte on Amazon - I cannot recommend these tights enough!), and the boots are Ellie Shoes' 'Sarah Mid Calf Boot'. The crown is by SweetV, my brooch is from TinyPasserine on Etsy, and my necklace is from AsamiMoonland. Moving on...
Once we were all seated, food and drinks started to be served! We started with a wonderful scone, moved on to a small salad, and then onto our main course, and finally ended the meal with this cute little raspberry tart. Our wait staff was professional, polite, and very efficient! I'm attaching a little collage of all of our delicious food items below.
After we finished our food, it was on to more festivities! First on the list: door prizes! We had a whole set of door prizes from our amazing sponsors! These ranged from socks, to tea, to brand novelty items, to much more! It was such a cool treat for all of us attendees, to have the ability to win a door prize, on top of all of the other goodies we had received!
Photos: Mary Anastasia Photography
We had a couple of lucky tablemates who won twice! One of them was generous enough to give me their second winning ticket, which I received a small prize bag for. It was such a sweet gesture and I'm so thrilled about it still. Thank you, generous table-mate! The contents of my bag are photographed below... I did also receive a few other items in this bag, but shared those items with the other person at my table who did not have a winning ticket.
I was shocked to find a few Lady Sloth items in my bag, including their Halloween Origami socks and Spooky Macarons bow! I also received this beautiful pearl necklace. I still can't believe the amount of collaboration, coordination, and generosity that went into these prize bags! After all of the door prizes were given out, it was on to our final scheduled activity of the day - the coordinate contest! This optional contest was broken down by category, and then by overall winner. I entered in the classic section (Entry #3 over here!)
Photos: Mary Anastasia Photography
Each winner would receive a sash for their winning category along with a gift card to Eat Me, Ink Me; The best overall from that set of winners would also receive a crown and a gift card to KuroShiro Kawaii! I won't show photos of each winner due to respect for their privacy, but I will say that the kind tablemate I mentioned earlier won the Gothic category! All 3 category winners were so deserving, and our overall winner was so sweet too! Everybody looked amazing.
Around this time we also heard a beautiful speech from Denise, one of our mods, and got to sing happy birthday to another mod, Courtney! After these festivities wrapped up, we were set free for photos and group photos! Our big community group photo was at the top of this post. After that, we were all done!
Overall, this event was such a wonderful celebration for the amazing lolita fashion community that Michigan has. It is genuinely mind-boggling when I think of thee amount of effort, time, and dedication that our event organizers put into this, and I'm so honored to have been a part of it! Here's to another 16 years, Michigan EGL Society!
