Well first off – the hotel messed up the rooms, and the March of Dimes people came over and straightened out as best they could – we ended up with a big suite for all of us. It was pretty nice! I wish the Marriott had something like that for Dragoncon that wasn’t like, you know, $5000 a night or something, because that would be so perfect for me, Chase and the gang.
Saturday morning we got up and had breakfast, then we all headed over to the convention center right across the street. We met up with our March of Dimes contact, who was super nice and excited to have us there, and the entertainment coordinator and a few other folks. They walked us through everything, showed us where our backstage would be, and we did a run-through of our section of the program.
The ballroom before it got crowded!
Then Chase and I went out and grabbed a quick lunch and went to walmart so he could get new batteries for his chestbox. Then I went ahead and got dressed, and we went on over and I helped Chase get suited up. Chase I, along with Matt as Chewie, were assigned to sit in the Star Wars “vignette.”
Salacious Crumb helped me get Chase into Vader š
The whole event was a fundraiser dinner for the March of Dimes. Each person attending paid $500 a plate, with corporate plates being $2500. It was black-tie, everyone was very dressy and there were professional photographers roaming around. The main event was a competition between seven local chefs. Each chef prepared a dish based around their assigned theme – all of the themes this year were sci-fi based. One chef was “Star Wars,” and then there was E.T., Men in Black, Star Trek, Close Encounters, Fifth Element, Rocky Horror, and Little Shop of Horrors. Each chef had a “vignette” – this is where, before dinner started, during the cocktails, he or she served little samples of the dish he was preparing for the judges to the guests. Next to their table they had a booth where characters from their assigned theme posed, and the guests could take their picture with the characters, etc. Pretty neat.
So anyway – the vignette for the Star Wars chef was Vader, Chewie and Leia (myself), along with two local performers as jedi who later did a choreographed lightsaber duel. I got pics of most of the vignettes. The rest of the gang either went up to the ViP room, or just wandered the crowd as entertainment.
Us
Once all the guests were seated, they began announcing the chefs – the Star Wars chef was first, so all of us marched down behind him, and lined up along the stage while he presented his dish to the judges. Then we marched off – and we were done for the night, except for the four stormtroopers who escorted the other chefs (no matter what their theme was!)
And then to our surprise – the March of Dimes folks had reserved tables for us, right out there with the rest of the guests! We hadn’t known they were going to do that – we were all in jeans and stuff after we’d changed. We were served the $500 meal right along with everyone else – it was the best meal I’ve had at an event LOL
The rest of the dinner was a lot of fun, since there was a “show” with each theme/chef. A local group of dancers did the Men in Black song, complete with Loki in his alien costume in the middle of it all dancing, LMAO. Another group did the Time Warp, and a magician did an act that eventually revealed the Diva from the Fifth Element. We missed part of them, but it was fun.
By the time dessert was served, they had started the live auction, and Chase and I decided to go on back to the hotel. Most of the group stayed behind and took advantage of the reopened bar.
I ended up with a headache, so the next morning we got on up and got packed and headed out. Thanks to daylight savings time ending AND coming back from the eastern time zone, we “gained” two hours coming back – we got home at noon, Memphis time, after leaving Chattanooga at 9 their time LOL. Still doesn’t change the fact it was a 5 hour drive. We ended up going to bed at 8:30, we were so beat.
But it was an absolutely awesome event, I’ve never done anything quite like it – I’m hoping the March of Dimes people will keep us in mind for next year š Since they change their theme every year, I had mentioned maybe they could do superheroes – but on second thought, there were quite a few somewhat creepy, tipsy old men there (one called me BABYDOLL…) so I’m not sure I’d really want to wear spandex around that crowd! LOL