A Military Ball

Last Friday night Michael and I went to our first Military Ball.  Leading up to this event I was so nervous and stressed about it because I had never been to one and I didn't know what to expect.  I was especially nervous about finding the right dress and doing my hair the right way so I wouldn't embarrass Michael by being over or under-dressed.  Luckily I had my sister and some other great friends to help me out!

The whole night was full of formalities and ceremony.  Everything was done a certain way at a certain time.  It was fun to get dressed up and hang out with our friends in a more fancy and formal setting.  The first hour was cocktail hour.  Which for us meant just standing and talking with our friends.  The pictures are blurry because the lighting was bad in that room!

Here we have the Ward's, Morris's, Olsen's, Lane, and of course, Michael and I.  

After cocktail hour we went through a receiving line where I met the leaders of Michael's battalion.  The line took us right into the main room, or ballroom, I guess.  Unfortunately we weren't able to sit next to our friends because they wanted the tables to be more diversified with different ranking soldiers.  It was okay though, because I had Michael.  We couldn't sit down until we were instructed to, and we couldn't start eating right away.  First they did toasts, it was scripted and very ceremonious.  A funny side note was when we couldn't get the lid off of our sparkling cider bottle so one of the sergeants sitting at our table helped and as he popped the lid off the cider went shooting everywhere!! :/  Hahaha!  Oops!!

After the toasts we were served our food but still couldn't eat until after another scripted, ceremonious thing.  Michael and I both got steak and it was delicious!!  I wish I had taken a picture of our table and the room because it was so beautiful!!  I did take this one of Michael and I though:

 After dinner some of the platoons did skits for entertainment.  I didn't really understand any of them . . . They were more like poking fun at higher ups and inside jokes, so it wasn't all that entertaining to me, but everyone around me was busting up so I guess it was funny  . . . Michael was in one of the skits, but all he had to do was sit and respond to the person talking.  He did a good job! ;)  After the entertainment they had a d.j. and the dance part got started.  We didn't really dance though because the music was lame and the people that were dancing were all doing what looked like choreographed moves, or a line dance of some sort.  It was a really fun night overall!!

I was bummed that we didn't get a more clear picture from earlier, so Michael let us take one when we got home!!  He's a trooper!