I was lucky enough to be invited again so we trotted off to Cambridge and got ourselves ready for the ball. I had a cute ballerina dress prepared but the night before I was told it has to be at least knee length, I don't actually own ANYTHING knee length apart from my last year's dress so I told myself 'if Kate Middleton can reuse her outfits, anyone can!'
Whilst getting ready we listened to a few tunes and I kid you not, the boys took at least half an hour to do their bow ties! Who knew boys could take longer than girls to get ready for events?!
{Geoff and Angie}
{Me and James}
As soon as we got in we grabbed a glass of champagne and a cute little cup of game sausage and amazing mash! This is where the fireworks happen later at night and the crowds of public were already flooding onto the punting river to watch the fireworks as well.
{The first of many glasses!}
{Gorgeous decorations around the champagne hall}
{Punting boats}
Then we scrambled over to the oyster tables, this was a pretty serious run for them so I didn't manage a pic but it was a huge table of fresh, delicious oysters. I accidentally put too much tabasco on one and my mouth was on fire!!
We moved onto the main area which consists of lots of themed tents with different food and drink bars. The first was a sushi bar with wines and beers, then the cocktail tent with jazz dancing. A chill out tent with tea and fairy cakes, littered with sofas for those spinning heads, and right at the end the glorious hog roast which I couldn't help but run to! A delicious bun full of pulled pork, stuffing and apple sauce, I even managed to persuade the waiter to sneak in some crackling for me!
Scattered around the tents was a fairground with Bumpers, coconut shy (which I actually won at 4am thanks to too much champagne I think!) and a candy floss stand. We ran over to the gin bar and got ourselves some G&Ts before going to the main lawn again for the fireworks.
{Blurry fireworks}
The fireworks are possibly one of the best parts of the evening, they're actually incredible and last at least 20 minutes, thats a lot of oohs and aahs! They co-ordinate the fireworks to music and, being Cambridge, a lot of it was classical. However, they did put a few minutes to LMFAO 'Sexy and I Know it', standard fireworks music.
After a few more drinks we went over to watch Pixie Lott do her set. She really is good, her voice was fab and she even did a little Motown mix too. I actually forgot how many songs I know of hers so was singing along alone standing next to everyone else!
However, once this was done it was straight over to the dance tent because I had found out the BOULLE was there! Made in Chelsea's Francis Boulle was Djing so we went for a boogie to a few of his songs.
{He had a very cute dance moves for when the song changes}
{I was near him!}
The night all went so quickly, we danced and drank a hell of a lot of champagne and cocktails!
But before the night ended we went to go and see my 90's idols the VENGABOYS!
{They admitted themselves that they were trashy, cheesy, Britpop}
Once the Vengaboys had finished, it was amazing by the way and totally brought me back to 90's school discos, we went over to finish off the cocktail bar before we needed to leave. Last year we managed to get the barmen to make us their own cocktail with all of the alcohol left in the bar and they were named 'idiots' because you had to be an idiot to drink them!
We went over and decided to order the same when we discovered some guys ordering the exact same thing, we had found our old idiot buddies! Once we had thought we'd drunk the bar dry we went over for our survivors photo at 5am. We had a little choir to sing us through our drunkenness and then the photo was taken with everyone's arms up in the air.
{A busy lawn for the survivors photo}
{Cambridge's answer the the Dalton Warblers}
{Photographer on a crane}
{We survived!}
It was such an incredible night and I don't think I've quite done it justice from this blog. There's so much to do that you simply can't do it all, if you can ever get a ticket it's a must go.
However, my advice would be to find a place to stay after the ball, we ended up having to go back to London at 6am with our ball dresses and tuxes still on, the commuter tube was particularly embarrassing! Oh and you will feel horrendous once the hangover kicks in the next evening, Byron was our hangover restaurant of choice! Overall an unforgettable night!
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