the time i tried to wear my wedding dress to disneyland (+ what we did this year for dapper day)

so, this past sunday was dapper day at disneyland. but before i tell you about this years spring dapper day, i thought id take a few minutes to tell a rather hilarious story from last years dapper day that i just remembered that i never actually told here:

see, at the beginning of last year was when i first found out about dapper day (which, if youre not familiar with it, is an unofficial disneyland event where people go to disneyland in formal/vintage attire and its amazing), and obviously WE HAD TO GO. my mom even offered to watch alice so that james and i (plus my sister and one of her friends) could chill out and go on big rides and stuff. awesome. 

then i got to thinking about vintagey formal wear. and you know what i had in a giant ziploc bag in my closet that probably still fit and needed to be put to some kind of use? my wedding dress. (oh, come on, im really supposed to just wear it once and just begrudgingly store it for the rest of my life, oh please) so my mom and i spent an afternoon sewing a bustle into it (since it wasnt a wedding wedding dress it didnt have one in there already) so it wouldnt drag and it was decided that i was going to wear it to dapper day. 

then when the day came we got all fancy and snapped a quick family photo before dropping alice off (please notice how she is NOT amused that we were going to disneyland without her):

but unfortunately thats the only photo we got while i was still wearing my wedding dress. 

because as soon as we got inside the park, i was made VERY aware that wedding dresses are NOT allowed inside disneyland. like, at all. as in, a security guard escorted my sister and i out of the park to the outside bathrooms so that i could change, to the locker room to be SURE that it was locked in a locker, and back inside the park. 

so obviously we made a big fuss about how they totally ruined our wedding day (a lie) and that it was totally illogical that ALL OF THE OTHER CAST MEMBERS that saw me outside of the park didnt say anything (that part was true). and then they gave us two eight-person fast passes for any ride we wanted. (and then we got to ride the cars ride without waiting in line which should be a lessons as to why its always a good idea to lie to disneyland cast members)

and since i totally anticipated something of this sort happening, i did bring a back up dress:

and really everything after that was awesome. obviously we were SUPER stoked for when dapper day rolled around again (and, this time i planned an outfit that would not get me sternly escorted out of the park). 

so we got all fancied up and went to disneyland. unfortunately though, i was still EXTREMELY drained from the previous days blogger brunch, so instead of a super exciting do-all-the-things disneyland day, it was more of a relaxed lets-just-people-watch-and-have-a-nice-lunch disneyland day. and those are nice too. 

actually, I'm really glad we decided our intentions for the day ahead of time, because sunday was seriously THE crowdedest that I've EVER seen disneyland, EVER. it took us about a half hour to park, IN THE MOST PERFECT, EFFICIENT, WELL DESIGNED PARKING STRUCTURE EVER. it was insane. 

anyway, once we FINALLY got into the park (and a nice gentleman gave us his fast passes for indiana jones), we decided to take pictures. they're doing a bunch of construction in new orleans square right now so my normal photo spot wasnt accessible, so we decided the next best place would be the mark twain. 

here we are separately:

 

and then together:

next we tried to do a proper outfit shoot, but it turns out thats a difficult thing to do when youre on a steam powered riverboat, but we did our best (also, a stranger lady was TOTALLY taking pictures of me too, which was totally weird):

outfit details:

top, skirt, stole, and bag: vintage

tights: target

shoes: urban outfitters

glasses: zenni optical

so, it was about 80 degrees out on sunday, and i was wearing a fox fur stole it got uncomfortable a couple times, but, i mean, how often do i get to wear, as alice calls it, my "puppy scarf" (no joke, when she woke up sunday morning and saw my outfit the first thing out of her mouth was "mommy! i like your puppy scarf!". the stole has a funny story: one day a friend of mine sent me a facebook message asking me if i wanted some old furs his friend was getting rid of, and i answered (somewhat facetiously) "only if they're the kinds with the heads and legs still attached", to which he answered "even better, the glass eyes dont even match", and i was like "sold!". and now alice calls it my "puppy scarf" which is equal parts adorable and observant and sad and gross all at the same time and i love it. 

now as SOON as i saw these pictures i realized something: i should NOT have been wearing black tights. i TOTALLY needed nude or white stockings but i didnt have any and now i feel really self conscious. 

but otherwise i really loved this outfit (and that i managed to get my hair looking nice), and apparently lots of other people did too, because seriously SO MANY people stopped us to take our picture. like, the only other time id been photographed that much was at my wedding. 

then after pictures we had lunch at cafe orleans, which i cant believe that id never been to before because HOLY CRAP THEY HAVE MY TWO FAVORITE FOODS EVER. garlic fries (with an AMAZING remoulade sauce) and a mixed green salad with raspberry vinaigrette and goat cheese:

 remember how i said it was super crowded? well there was a 45 minute wait for a table. 45 minutes. for lunch. i mean, its not like we had anywhere we needed to be and it was totally worth it, but still. thats forever in waiting for lunch time. 

as we were eating we noticed that the mark twain meet up was starting (and by that i mean, entire boatloads of adorable dapper day folks were on the mark twain waving and shouting), so james and i decided to join them, since last year we missed all the official dapper day activities.

now remember yesterday when i said i made a new friend at the brunch that was going to dapper day too? nikki and i totally hit it off at the blogger brunch and had been tweeting each other about trying to meet up at some point sunday, and we were able to find each other in the line for the mark twain line!:

 and had a grand old time during the meet up itself:

(photo stolen from nikkis instagram)

after the mark twain, we used our star tours fast passes (i think id go so far as to say thats my current favorite "big ride") and james asked my how i was feeling (since he know that two big outings in a row is something that usually doesnt go well for me), i said "im not feeling bad yet, but i definitely dont feel good anymore" and being the gentleman that he is, he suggested that we get going before i actually started to feel bad, and me being me, i replied "ok, but can we get ice cream first?". so we got ice cream. and then went home. 

it was a nice day. 

i really hope we can make it to the fall dapper day too!