How to attend a Black Tie Gala Awards Event in a room fulla rockstahs

First, months before the event, accept that you do not have large cash to buy a new dress.

Do not freak out that you wore the same dress two years in a row or that you wore another same dress two years before that.  You are now left with two choices: 

1) accept that you are not famous and nobody's comparing pictures of you over the years.

2) accept that if you want to wear something different, it's going to fall under the category of VINTAGE which means a) your closet or b) Thrift store.

If you're lucky, right around that time you go on a crazy obsessive closet purge, during which you find a black velvet dress -which you had completely forgotten about - stuffed into a garment bag with something else.

"What the heck is this thing?" you mutter.  "My 1989 prom dress???"

Once the plastic bag is ripped off the hanger, you realize that it;s much less hideous than all the other things you wore that year... in fact, it might just be... workable.

Does it fit?  That was twenty years ago.  Bravely, you wiggle into it, get somebody to pull up the zipper (zip me up, Buster) and wiggle it into place.  MIRACULOUSLY it fits.  Your husband tells you it actually fits better now, because unlike your teenage self, you now have HIPS.  You thank your biological offspring for having big heads and decide this is your dress.  

Problem solved.

Jethro's black suit jacket and two shirts, both black, go to the drycleaners and back again.  The question remains as to why the heck drycleaning costs so much.  What do they do to your clothes when you turn your back?

So the stuff is in a suitcase, which ends up with you in a hotel room.  You've decided that for once in your adult life you're going to act like a grownup and wear some real high heeled nice looking shoes rather than your usual choice of a) black knee high platform boots or b) white knee high boots or c) red ankle boots.  

You're totally okay with the boots thing.  Boots are life.  Know that:  BOOTS ARE LIFE.  But just once, pretty shoes would be okay.  

But they don't have to be respectable.  

Hours later you come back to your nice hotel room with hot pink shoes.  They're satin like a bridesmaid's shoes.  They'll brighten up a black dress.

Normally you'd love black.  But darnit, half the women there are wearing black.  You gotta spice things up don't you?  Yes you do; somebody has to and it's gotta be you.  Don't wait for anybody else.  

So you get a couple of pink roses to put in your hair.  

That's better.

Jethro thinks he's going to wear the bronze coloured tie tonight.  I know; how daring of this man in black!  You think, silently, that it's good, because if he wins another Juno you can tell this one apart from the first one in the pictures because the first time he won he was wearing a black tie.

The Awards Gala has now become a Gold Tie Event.

One problem persists.

He does not have his black jeans.

He goes shopping ONCE A YEAR and it's the weekend of the Juno Awards.  It's his only time off when he's not building things or fixing things or biking with kids or falling asleep on the couch.  

So you set out on a mission to find black jeans.  

More later.... with the possibility of pictures...

Oh you must stay tuned, this is GRIPPING ENTERTAINMENT!