I actually talked about this pretty recently in my blog, but here’s the whole story in its entirety.
So, I’d been wearing Belldandy to every single convention that year, including shipping those wings to Dallas, Anaheim, and now Atlanta. After the Star Wars costume contest that saturday at Dragoncon, I rushed back to our hotel room – mostly to get out of my Padme headdress, as I mentioned last story post, but also to rush into my Belldandy costume for the anime costume contest.
(Hey, I was really into costume contests back then.)
So I threw Belldandy on – I was pretty good at it by this point – and Ash painted my forehead symbols on. The girls together got my wings on me – never easy when you’re not taller than me – and we ran off to catch an elevator. I, was, at that point, going to make it JUST IN TIME for the contest, barring issues.
But, of course, there were issues. We could NOT catch an elevator. Every single one was packed, no room for a winged girl. As much as people complain about the elevators NOW, that was the worst and longest wait I’ve ever had for an elevator at the con.
Finally, after probably 20-30 minutes of elevator rage, we devised a plan – Ash would take one wing, Cath would take the other, and we’d each go down separately. They took my wings off, and the next elevator, Cath went down with a wing. Next, Ash went down. Finally, I came down and they struggled to get me put back together.
We RAN over to the Hyatt. Since the hallway down to the room was kinda crowded (it was down in the bottom of the Hyatt), I sent Cath down to see if I could still participate, because by this point, we were very very late. Cath came back with bad news – nope, I’d been turned away.
All that frustration for nothing!
I made the best of it, and wandered around for a while. Got a picture with a car whose license plate was “Deshiznt.” Met Buddy Christ.
But, it was really just too crowded for the wings, so after a bit I went and changed.
Oddly enough, even though I only wore it for about an hour – I found more photos of myself in that than in other “large” costumes in later years where I know more people took photos. Weird.