Tag Archives: Fabric Market

Saturday night was the St Patrick’s Day Ball at the Kerry Parkside Hotel.  This ball is supposed to be the event of the year, so we were very excited to get tickets. Our group of friends was split across 3 tables of 10.  It was certainly a busy night – there must have been over 1000 people there – all ex-pats of course!

The ballroom was packed full of tables  that were laden with glasses and goodies.

The tables all had opened (with no lids!) bottles of Baileys and Whiskey.  There were hats, feather boas and masks.  The glitter from the green hat got everywhere!  You can also see the “goody bags” on each chair.  These were filled with a strange mix of crisps/chips, umbrella, eco water bottle, flash drive, miniature bottle of Jamiesons, bottle of milk tea and a baseball hat.

Because this was a fancy ball with everyone dressing up, my friends and I all went to the fabric market to have dresses made.  I had seen a dress that I really liked – Jodie Foster wore it to an Award Ceremony in USA.  Here is her dress:

And, here is my fabulous copy:

and the back:

I was absolutely thrilled with the end result.  It fits like a glove, is a great copy and cost me about £60/$100!  This took a week to make.  It was the same people who had made Isabelle’s beautiful dress for the Daddy/Daughter ball.

All of the ladies looked lovely in their dresses.  All the men were very smart in their Dinner Jackets!

As you can see from this photo, Owen could not get his jacket on due to the fact that his arm is in a cast.  He broke it last Wednesday.  Oliver and Owen were riding their bikes and Oliver got a little distracted – Owen went over the handle bars and BAM, CRASH, CRACK – 1 broken arm (bruised ribs and arms too).  He has been assured that in 4 weeks time it should be mended. 😦

We tried another photo later that evening:

It was a fun night with our friends.  There was plenty of entertainment – alot of it Irish, but some Chinese too.  Later in the evening, a band played so that everyone could dance.  The Chinese dancers were fantastic.

It was quite the mix of music and displays.

The St Patricks Ball is a charity event which meant that not only were the tickets very expensive, but we also got “persuaded” to buy some raffle tickets.  I would have liked to be the lucky winner as it was a fabulous trip to Ireland – all expenses paid!  We were not lucky that night……

As the tickets were so expensive, we were a little disappointed that some of the drinks ran out early in the evening.  However, I was impressed with the food – for mass catering it was a very good meal.

It was a lovely night out.  I love an excuse to get dressed up!  We will not be going back next year, so it was nice to have it done it this year.