Getting Ready For A Beauty Pageant - Lots of Work

Since our last pageant experience, I think we have learned a few things. I am not a good pageant mom. I do things how I think they should be, but since I have hated the pageant world for being so focused on looks, I have not done the research I should have done to support my daughter. 

Don't think I haven't seen the irony that my mother was a national beauty pageant winner and none of my girls have done pageants until she passes away. My mother would have been wonderful helping Princess Five and telling me what I needed to do to help her succeed in this. Funny to me how within two months of mom'd passing, Princess will do two pageants. 
 
I didn't really like some of the outfits we had for Princesses last experience but we were able to adjust some we already had and used those which is also funny since we went out and purchased some for the last pageant.

I have spent several all-nighters sewing dresses, washing dresses, ironing dresses, mending dresses. I had NO idea how much work a pageant could be. I know several of my friends bought their daughters prom dresses with pageants in mind and rather than buying them "prom" looking dresses, they bought pageant evening gown dresses. 

Princess Five has had early morning drill practice all week and twice I have still been up when she gets up to head out. She feels guilty that I am working so hard on all this but I want her to go out confident as last time, we just threw things together without any knowledge of what we were doing. 
 
I am so glad that she did the other pageant as it gave us some hints to help us know better what to do with this one. Tonight we did a "run through" with each outfit even though I haven't finished her evening gown. 

I found that I needed to take her belt in on one dress, fix the length of the necklace on another dress, glue the earrings that kept twisting to the side, fix a hole near the zipper on another dress and put in a few hooks to keep the antique zipper flap down, and change out some shoes and jewelry we thought didn't quite "fit" the look we wanted. 
 
I will hopefully share how I make the slip for her evening gown and how I altered three dresses into one dress for her evening gown dress. 

I also need to figure out her hair as when I watched the video of her in her ringlets last pageant, she looked like a little girl with all those rings. We need to give her some lift and tone down the curls and yet be able to change up her hair some for the different dresses. This was tonight's list of "to do" items for me and I did all but sewing the slip / ruffles to make her evening gown train follow her. It is too slinky so I will have to share that next week once I figure it out. 

If she does well, maybe I can get my "good mom" card back as like I shared at the top, I am not the best pageant mom.