Big Bustle Birthday Party

Caroline had a Big Bustle party for her birthday in October, held both at the Arboretum in DC and at her lovely Capitol Hill house.

I don’t have a bustle gown, and I was also a month from my due date, so I was unprepared to sew one! She kindly let me wearing 18th century since it was kinda bustle-y. It’s a stretch, but I appreciated it, since I wanted to see everyone, especially Merja who came all the way out from Finland!

I wasn’t sure what I had that would fit, but I was inspired by Chelsea wearing a Francaise when she was very pregnant, and mine totally worked. I just let out the back laces and worked great! I did wear stays, but I wore them unlaced. Mine are sorta permanently laced and I just have a very very long single spiral lace that I knot so it doesn’t come undone and I can loosen it a lot to get in and out of them. So I just wore them like that, totally untightened. I actually found it they provided nice belly support without squeezing.







I was so happy to see Merja, and to get to see this lovely costume in person!





There was a gorgeous picnic spread of delicious things:

Francaise Dinner - redux

I finally went through all the lovely photos that Beth took at the Francaise dinner and pulled out the couple of me I liked!

The full set is available here:

http://bwpw.zenfolio.com/francaise2015

And photos for purchase here:

http://bwpw.zenfolio.com/francaisepurchase

More Francaise dinner

So, apparently I have more Francaise dinner pics that I was too tired to notice were further down in the album (behind some brunch photos). So here you have more Francaise dinner pics! yay!

I believe this was Doug's salmon:









Our (tiny) dealer table:

Francaise Dinner

So here we have the Francaise dinner itself. There were so many logistics that weekend, but amazingly, it really couldn't have gone better!

Gloria's friend Beth is a professional photographer and she took beautiful photos for us! I'll share some of those in another post.

Here's the group pic she took:

A very big thanks to Gen for making us these beautiful cameo chocolates, which we put on everyone's plate. They were so pretty and much as I hated to eat them, they also tasted delicious. Thank you, Gen!



More behind the cut.