Glass Slippers and Ice Tiaras – At Sea – [01/31/2012]

Last night, it snowed on board.

Well sort of…

When the theme of the grand ball is “Ice Blue Winter” (read: they needed to give the guests something to do while we were drifting about in Antartica), it somewhat is a requirement that there be some kind of snow. And so, snow there was. Shining blue fanci-fetti style snow, and dollhouse snow, the kind that’s really shredded plastic but if you scatter it just so and squint your eyes just right, you could almost believe it was the real thing. In short, I’m sure that housekeeping adored us for the decorations on this one.

That said, it was a wonderful night. The guests stayed for the entire hour and a half, something that has been nearly unheard of previous to this, and the ballroom truly glittered. We went rather all out on the decorations this time, and when the lighting hit the blue stars suspended from the ceiling just so, it sent blue and white sparkles bouncing all around the room. We even had ice sculptures, though they didn’t last too long under the heat of the stage lights. If you have access to my facebook albums, there’s a rather overly adorable picture of me planting a kiss on an ice penguin. I unwittingly ended up looking like something out of a classic valentine’s day card – save that I’m in ice blue, not red.

This marked the first time out of the gate for my ice blue formal since I wore it for my university convocation what seems like forever ago (really, how can so much happen in only 6 years? And how can it have been six years? And maybe I should just not think about it) – I’ve worn the matching red one many many times over the years, but I don’t have much occasion to don the blue. It suited the night though, it was definitely the right colour. Ironically though, so many of the team were wearing various shades of blue that when we took the team photograph in front of the stage we nearly all blended into the background.

Champaigne flowed (and was given away), raffle prizes were dispensed with much celebration, and all in all, it was one of the most successful balls any of us had seen for a long while.

At around 11:30 the band started to edge away from the traditional jazz and waltz instrumentals and started playing upbeat charts, easing away from Walking in a Winter Wonderland  and towards Dancing in September – which is always seen as a subtle indictation of ‘the party’s over down here, but it’s moving upstairs’..

And as usual, the diehards, which includes almost all of the team, swapped high heels for dancing shoes and melted a few hearts at the upstairs lounge. The after party always turns into an informal crew party, and this one was no different, especailly since we have a new cast on board which has only just started to settle in enough to relax.

All in all, another one marked down as a success