Texas Rose Festival
A Deb Ball full of 'Celestial Wonders'
This is not a typical post topic for me, but after a weekend of wondrous chaos and the fact that none of my school friends could comprehend what was happening, I thought it would be worth giving a little insight to the ridiculousness that is my home: Texas. The Tyler Rose Festival is an Debutante Ball on steroids that has been going for 84 years in a smallish town in Texas called Tyler. I am from Houston, not Tyler, but most of my dads family either lived their or is still living there; I mention this because in order to participate in the Rose Festival you must have some connection to Tyler. Their is a queen & ladies in waiting who are the girls still living in Tyler then their are duchesses, the out of town girls, aka me.
Themed 'Celestial Wonders', each girl got some sort of spaced themed costume above we have: Ursa Major (the polar bear), Cassiopea, Rose Nebula, Super Nova, Cloud, Dawn and two others i'm not exactly sure of. The same man has designed the costumes for over fifty years, Winn Morton thought of over sixty different creative masterpieces to showcase in this years Rose Festival. I promise i'm not being biased when I say this years were my favorite collection of costumes I have seen after going to at least five different years festivals.
Susie has made all four of my cousins and my dresses for the Rose Festival, she is called the 'hoop skirt genius' and a hoop was one of the requirements I insisted on when picking my costume. I mean this is the only time in my life I will get to wear anything remotely this extra, might as well do it big! I remain in awe of the work she does, Susie had 15 dresses to make this year, each dress is hand maid from start to finish even down to every single sequin. The lengthy methodical process of making each dress differs from person to person, mine took 5 different fittings filled with corsets and the lovely Texas heat sending sweat down my legs.
As the extraness continues, an audience will fill with friends and family to watch the members of the court individually walk around the stage watching the beautiful creations Wynn envisioned come to life. Three of us, Cassiopea (Lizzie Darwin), Andromeda (me) and Pegasus (Morgan Weaver), were placed on stage together to portray a mythological story. Cassiopea brags of her daughter Andromeda's beauty upsetting Neptune who then ties Andromeda to a rock in the middle of the sea; luckily her true love pegasus comes and saves her from the sea monster.
