Last night I attended this amazing black tie event that benefits the LGBT community. I’d been invited by my friends (I’ll call them B and X), who are a gay couple I’ve been friends with for nearly 20 years now. I love them dearly, and they invite me to events, dinners and brunches on the regular.
I really didn’t want to go to this event because the ticket was so expensive ($400), but after a lot of thinking about how much I adore these guys and how much fun we have together AND the fact that they kind of wore me down AND the fact that the money is going to some really great causes AND the dinner/dance was taking place a mere two blocks from my apartment, I decided to go.
I have several dresses that I can wear to black tie events and other formal occasions, but for some reason, the idea of wearing one of the wedding dresses that I’ve never gotten to ever wear was appealing to me. It just struck me. I think it has something to do with how I’ve been feeling about relationships lately and the fact that I haven’t had the chance to do certain things because of my own ideas of what other people are thinking or saying or doing (or not doing).
So I just said fuck it. I’m wearing the damn dress to the gay prom and I’m going to wear it well!
This particular dress is more of an evening gown suitable for events like this - it doesn’t look like a wedding dress, save for the fact that it is a mix between a cream and an ecru color. It has these really gorgeous petal looking pieces of silk hand-sewn onto the dress and fastened with tiny, tiny pearls. It’s actually quite a stunning, unique looking dress.
I got ready in the afternoon. The Champagne welcome reception was to start at 5 pm, and of course, the guys wanted to be there for that (me too!). I walked myself the couple of blocks to the hotel. There is a short, sexy little train on my dress, so of course, I held the bottom of the dress up to not get the city grime on it. But my heels kept getting caught in some of the hand stitching where the petals are fastened on the inside of the dress. All I could think about on that walk was something like, “this is my life…walking myself to a gay gala in a wedding dress!”
But the first of many, many, many (literally dozens and dozens) of complements came as I approached the hotel and these women walked right up to me and told me how gorgeous my dress was. I knew it was going to be worth it.
Met B & X in the lobby of the hotel and we went up to the reception, which was the coolest thing I think I’ve ever seen: these white-gloved hands were situated on one side of a greenery-covered wall holding onto Champagne flutes, just ready for the guests to pluck them out of the hands and have photos made. Once a person took the glass, the hand would go back inside the greenery and pull out another glass of Champagne! They even had pinkies raised! For some reason, I found that profoundly funny, and we kept going back and “cheering” with the hands. We annoyed the photographers to no end, but we didn’t care!
That’s kind of how the night went. We walked through the crowd and browsed the silent auction items as the grand hallway filled with gays, lesbians, transgenders, straights, drag queens, weirdos, fabulous people…EVERYONE! It was a crowd to behold, that’s for sure. Everyone had something to say, wear, be. I enjoyed the people watching to no end. And I participated in the parade of people, just drinking it all in and complementing and was complemented all night long.
And then the dinner, with the speeches and the celebs (several VERY notable people gave brilliant talks about human rights issues, and political speeches - ah-mazing!). But the table next to us was SO offing RUDE and disrespectful - one woman was talking so loudly that I couldn’t hear the speaker. I was appalled. I get it, they were drunk and whatnot and maybe didn’t care about hearing about human rights issues, but I wanted to hear what was being said and I thought other people around us did too.
So I walked over to the table and flat out said they were being disrespectful and to be quiet. They looked at me like I was a monster, but it did the trick and they were fairly quiet throughout the rest of the presentation, which was a couple of hours long.
But after the dinner, the drunkest bitch of them all came up to me and tried to pick a fight with me! I mean, it nearly burst into a cat fight! She was arguing with me and telling me that she WASN’T being disrespectful and that her daughter is a lesbian and on and on…things that didn’t make much sense at all because, I can appreciate that her daughter is a lesbian, but what does that have to do with the fact that everyone at their table was being a loudmouth ASSHOLE?
And I’d had just enough to drink that I was absolutely not going to back down or take any bullshit. I really felt some kind of crazy adrenaline pumping through my veins. Neither one of us backed down until one of Drunk Bitch’s friends pulled her away from me! Shit. Seriously, it was gonna go DOWN, Real Housewives style! I couldn’t believe it.
After the dinner, our friends at the next table finally left and the first party was winding down. There was still an after party, but there was no way that I was going to be able to attend. I was done after the near cat fight and ready to call it a night.
There were a lot of gyrations that we needed to make, though, before I went home. We were taking some centerpieces to B&X’s room and we walked and talked and said hello to more people and chit-chatted on the way to the room. I also ran into Drunk Bitch at some point on the way to the room and was feeling extra catty so I blew her a kiss. She did some kind of weird thing with her tongue, which proved that she was a sloppier drunk than me! ha.
Had a crazy ride up the elevator with about 15 more drunk people, dropped stuff off in the room and then B & X walked me back to my apartment, which was really nice of them to do.
We laughed and laughed about the cat fight and all of the other crazy things that happened through the night. I’m so glad that I went and I’m going to have to do it again next year! After all, I have one more unworn wedding dress (ha..that’s a joke…or is it?).
xo,
GS
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