A Marvellous Cocktail Party….. The Return

Phew, what a weekend!

Friday was the return of A Marvellous Cocktail Party at Farmer Browns in Tombland. It’s a 1930s themed cocktail party, with the focus on a bit of glamour, and some truly marvellous cocktails, properly made, strong, and cold.

I was so super busy at the start of the evening that I completely failed to take any photographs of myself looking glamorous. In fact I think I was mostly on auto pilot, so if I failed to talk to anyone I should, or looked a little distracted I hope you forgive me! The start of the evening was a little stressful due to a *cough* misunderstanding *cough* (read: They seriously messed up our booking) and the whole thing was a bit of a blur!

I wore my green Able Grable M’Lady dress. Such a gorgeous frock deserves more than one outing! This time I added a vintage art deco brooch at the neckline, a silver snake belt and diamante choker. I wore a peacock feather hair comb from Abilu Creations in my hair.

I have some snaps taken by other people during the evening.

With fellow Historical Sauce Lucy

With Co Organiser Karen of Blue Skies Events

This time round our Chinese Auction prizes included a gramophone, gorgeous Orange & Cinnamon 1930s recipe milk bath and lip tint from Elizabethan Herbal, a set of Lotus pearls and plenty of booze.

We also bought along a snuff bar this time round, we had 18 different varieties of snuff, courtesy of the Snuff Store who threw a few freebies in with our order. It was really popular and everyone had their own particular favourite! Mine is Attar of Rose, others preferred the Gin & Tonic flavour or the minty tobacco free varieties.

I’ll confess, the evening did not start in an auspicious manner for me, when, despite a face to face meeting a week and a half prior to the event and the fact that I had exchanged several emails with them in the week preceding, we arrived to be told they’d double booked us and that we couldn’t have the upstairs bar until 9pm. I was, as you can imagine, less than happy. But there was little we could do so we made the best of it and carried on setting up. Suffice to say that incredibly cross barely covers my feelings on this and whilst the staff on the night did everything they could to help make it go smoothly I’m a little flabberghasted at how unprofessional it was to tell us about it 3 hours before the doors opened, as if it was really no big deal.

There was a very tense period for us as organisers when we could see people facing half an hour bar queues at about 8:45pm. We tried to arrange some alternative drinks in the lounge, but with enough people to fill 2 bars crammed into 1 there wasn’t really enough space to get the word out that they were available. Still, by 9:30 the problems were all resolved, our photographer could finally set up her photobooth upstairs and people could spread out a little and have room to dance to the amazing Swingball.

The photobooth shots are available to order online from Silvestri Studios, so if you had a pose, go check yourself out!

Everyone I spoke to had a Marvellous time, and I must thank Hot Bopping Girls, Earl Harlem and Joseph Ballard for making it go with a swing!

I shall leave you with a few photos of our amazingly glamorous party guests. The rest of our photos are on the Vintage Norwich Facebook page or there are some lovely ones on Missy Vintage‘s page too.