Regency Twelfth Night party

This past Saturday night, my friends and I had our Regency Christmas party that was postponed because of bad weather. Of course, anyone living in the Mid-Atlantic region will note that the weather was bad immediately beforehand for this snow date, too! Happily the highways dried out fairly quickly, and no one who was planning to come to the new date had to cancel because of weather.

I stayed over Friday night so I could be up bright and early to start with the cooking and decorating - which there was a lot of! We had enough food to feed an army. And drinks...don't lets even mention the drinks.

I learned anew that my poor little camera makes everything orange in candlelight photos (and then my batteries died and I couldn't find the new ones), so none of these photos were taken by me. I very much appreciate those of my friends with decent enough cameras to get good shots!

Enough of this, on to the party!

FOOD. (Photo credit: quincy134 of In the Long Run)

We held the party in Alice's parents' house; it was built in the late 1820s, and they've furnished it with beautiful antiques. There are three working fireplaces, and Robin and I have been scheming to have an early 19th-century Christmas party there for quite a while. Alice's mum and dad were gracious enough to agree, and we're very grateful to them for letting us invade their lovely home and have our obnoxious friends over and drip sticky punch on the window-sills!

We tried to keep the refreshments and decorations at least period-esque - a Regency sit-down dinner wouldn't be as much of a problem, but keeping it mostly to finger foods was a bit more difficult! And we had wassail, mulled wine, and an exceptionally boozy punch (not to mention the bottles everyone else brought) for drinks. And we put up many bits of greenery, which mostly stayed where I put them and didn't drop holly berries everywhere to crunch underfoot.

(Photo credit: Taylor of Dames a la Mode)

(Photo credit: quincy134)

(Photo credit: quincy134)

(Photo credit: quincy134)

And my dress? Well, it's on its second real wearing, and though it does look rather nice in photos I'm not head-over-heels-in-love with it. It was hanging off one shoulder or the other mush of the night, and the stays hanging out the back is always a classy look. I'm glad to have something to wear for Regency evening events, anyway. I'd like a new evening frock but that's more of a "someday" than an "I need" right now.

Like I said...classy. (Photo credit: Taylor)

(Photo credit: quincy134)

(Photo credit: quincy134)

(Photo credit: quincy134)

It may not look like it in the photos, since we never made it a point to get a group picture, but we did have about sixteen people there! An eminently successful party, if I do say so myself.

About half the group stayed over, and we had a lovely costumed breakfast the next morning (thankfully there isn't documentation of many of us draped over sofas in front of the fireplace in the morning, before we'd got out of the sweatshirts and jammies!), with porridge and ham and the Epiphany cake we hadn't managed to cram into our faces the night before.

Since I ran out of time to finish my half-robe and petticoat (whoooops), I just wore my wool jumper; that's quite casual! With very bad hair.

Food! Part Two! (Photo credit: R Coccagna)

(Photo credit: R Coccagna)

And there was tea galore. Tea before breakfast, tea during breakfast, and tea after breakfast! (Photo credit: Taylor)

(Photo credit: R Coccagna)

And then there were the inevitable good-byes - and cleanup! They were kind and let me leave before it got dark since I have a bit of a drive...I protested before I left that I wasn't going to nap, whereupon arriving home, I was very good, and put away all the food and dishes and then - fell asleep on the sofa. Oops.

Playing dress-up is hard work, what can I say?

I do have some plans for the new sewing year, but I'll save that for another post.