Dressing Up, Dressing Down

This weekend was an eventful one for the ol' Lang family.  We had soccer games, sleep overs, a school fundraiser auction, and work, so it was nice for Tracy and I to take a little break and have some fun with the whole auction scenario this week.

The St. John the Apostle school in Oregon City hosts an annual auction every year out at Oregon Golf Club in West Linn, Oregon.  It's a nice club perched up on the hill, and the facilities where the auction was held is an open event space that was packed to the gills with knickknacks, gift baskets, dinner tables, a dance floor, and other auction paraphernalia.  Most people take the chance to dress up and use it as a nice evening out.  There were suits and party dresses galore at the function.

Me and my entourage, less so.

The idea came to us when Tracy and I were hanging out with some new friends who had convinced us to go to the auction for the first time this year.  We had never been to this event, and so we had little knowledge of how the whole thing operated.  In fact, I've only been to one other auction that doubled as a crab feed, so my expectations were pretty casual.  The auction had a disco theme this year, and we all thought it made the event ripe for some additional fun.  That's where the costumes came into play.

Thanks to Helen's Pacific Costumes in Portland, our party got decked out in some fly '70s gear.  While our buddy Ben decided on Austin Powers and the girls decided to go the go-go route, I stuck with one of the most iconic images I remember from the '70s.  John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.  My parents had the vinyl record when I was a kid and I remember John's iconic white suit splashed across the cover in a spray of multi-colored disco lights.  It was an obvious choice for me.  Here is the original:

Here's my rendition:

We all had a ball.  Thanks to our friends being late to our house, we made a fashionable entrance onto the scene.  It was a little traumatizing to find myself staring through a gigantic wall of greenhouse-like windows into a formal event when you've arrived looking like I did, but everyone greeted us warmly and gave us kudos for adding a little dazzle to the event.  Nothing like not taking yourself too seriously to make friends.  I was introduced to so many people that night because of what I was wearing.  It made the evening.

The rest of the company looked great as well.  Tracy walked through the event all night and people asked her, "Who are you?"  They couldn't recognize her with her wig and giant, silver glue-on eyelashes.  I loved her dress the moment I saw it in the costume shop, but the knee-red boots really sealed the deal.  Here we are as a group.

The only drawback to the event can be found here:

People should never be asked to wear these medieval torture devices, let alone to a party where you are expected to dance!  I was ready to dress down out of these shoes the moment I put them on.  Although it was cool being tall for a night.