Oh man, I’m as sick of writing about this now as you are reading it. But for the sake of completion, I’m going to go for it anyway. There’s only one day left.
I love my bathing suit!
Sunday was our second chance to go to the pool party, and today there was a swimsuit contest at the ridiculous hour of 10:30am. Luckily I find that being away from home makes it easier to get up at a normal hour, so we were ready to go on time. Almost. We spent a little too long doing my hair in victory rolls, and fussing over our outfits. I wore the twin to my dress the day before, since that was THE dress I wanted to wear at the pool because of how comfy it is and it’s lack of necessity for a bra, so it was practical. And yet it still took us a tad too long to get there. When we finally arrived after our last shitty long bus and shuttle trip, we found ourselves at the end of another line. LINES! So many damn LINES! You’d think Viva was an amusement park! Well it might as well be…
Finally after what felt like an hour of waiting, which probably was, we got into the pool area. The swimsuit contest had just finished. !@#$!!! Angela insisted on a lounge chair in the shade, and wouldn’t take one in the sun just until one in the shade could be spotted, so with all the people there we ended up wandering for quite a while until finally Mark and Lisa saw us and invited us to sit on some loungers they had in their area.
Angela at the pool party, with Lisa in the background. And my finger in the foreground apparently.
Then was an uneventful and great time. In Winnipeg it was freezing cold. I was lounging by a pool in Vegas in perfect warm weather with no wind and a perfectly sunny sky, looking at very interesting and beautiful people all around me. It was AWESOME.
We were both hungry, but I could have fucking starved for all I cared, I was loving it. But Angela not so much. So we left the pool party and went back to the French Market Buffet. We stayed there a LONG time, getting our money’s worth on the delicious food and talking business. Angela is Drawn and Plastered’s office hero, and these days we wouldn’t survive without her.
Somebody's been reading my beehive tutorial!
When we’d milked as much time as we could out of the buffet, we went back up to the vendors. Every time we were sure we had seen it all we found a little more. This time, because it was the last day, a lot of the vendors had rolled out new stock, and put what they had on sale so they wouldn’t have to haul it back to where they came from. I saw a really beautiful sky blue dress that had to be vintage, but when I looked at the rack next to it, I saw many of the same one, guaranteeing instantly that it was not. Whatever! That meant it was probably cheaper than I thought. I was right. It was 70$, marked down to 50$. This dress was so mine. But I had to find my size. The sizes marked seemed unusually large for the appearance of the dresses though, so I wondered aloud of they were in vintage sizes. Immediately a girl beside me burst out laughing to her friends. What an idiot I was, right? Well guess what! They were home sewn by the vendor’s wife using a 1950s pattern, and were sized accordingly, so yes they were vintage sizes. Not such an idiot after all! Turns out I’m a 1950s size 10. And Marilyn Monroe’s famous size 14? Not what you think.
I stole this picture from the Viva Las Vegas fan page, because my pictures sucked.
Anyway, I tried on a dress before understanding the sizes and it was huge, and then realized “wtf am I doing? I’m in a bathing suit, I don’t need no stinking change rooms.” So I tried on about 3 or 4 dresses until I found my size. Keep that tip in your hat, girls. Bathing suits when there aren’t change rooms = Win. Turns out I had left my parasol in the bathroom. When I went to retrieve it, it was gone. BITCH, STEALING MY SHIT IS NOT VERY LADYLIKE!!
But we had to run. Elvira was supposed to be hosting The Wasp Woman. I don’t have much to say about that except it was confusing to us when they started running the DVD. Where was Elvira? The movie totally sucked. It wasn’t your typical so-bad-it’s-funny, which I don’t understand anyway, but it was just plain bad. When we were absolutely sure Elvira wasn’t showing up, we left. A lot of people did. We thought maybe we had been confused about what was supposed to happen, but when we asked the ushers they said she WAS supposed to come, but she got sick and cancelled. Lame.
Back up to the vendors it was, for the last time. I had been aching for a Rago girdle for…ever, and knew that Viva was the best place to get one, but we still hadn’t found a booth selling them. I knew they had to have them somewhere, so we went on the hunt. Eventually we did find such a booth, not a Rago booth exactly but they did carry it, along with all kinds of other things that made it a Victoria’s Secret for the vintage set. It was wonderful. They had two tables covered in vintage lingerie of all kinds dyed bright colors, and a rotating display of pasties, including some that looked like spiders. Not only did we find what we were looking for (Angela wanted one too after wearing my vintage one to try it out), but they came in red and black lace, completely unavailable anywhere else. We spent forever debating the merits of hooked and zipped vs roll-on, and finally went for the roll-on. I also got a matching bra because I wanted something not cone-shaped, but at least a change from the heavily padded super round shape available everywhere else. It was absolutely perfect. I will write a review. Well, when we got out of the bathrooms, because you can’t try on a girdle and bra in public even with a bathing suit on, who should I spot at the booth but Doris Mayday!
She was just as gorgeous as the doll-looking girls, but more real if that makes any sense. I loved that so much more. She was sweet as pie, just as I expected. I wondered if she had made an appearance at the PUG tent, and she had. But she felt bad for all those people waiting in line in the sun, and was giving them water. Doris is awesome ❤
I swear I don't normally look like this much of a boy. You know that, don't you?
When we came across the Stop Staring! booth for the second time, I told Angela she should go show Alicia Estrada her new dress she had bought the day before since she was now wearing it. What followed was a whirlwind. Alicia told us something that’s hers alone to tell, and Angela immediately jumped in to giving her advice. I stood there feeling momentarily useless, but being equally part of the conversation with equally valid things to say, I joined in with whatever I could. Alicia was so receptive she offered us each a dress in exchange for our emails. The dresses are STUNNING. Thank you a million times, Alicia, we love you! What a great end to a fabulous weekend!
Epilogue: We went to a few more hotels on the strip on our way back. The Venetian was amazing, and we took pictures until my feet were about to explode. The trip back home was vastly easier with only two planes to take instead of three, and we both made it looking sexy as hell in our new dresses, chic updos, and our new lacy lingerie. We were even hit on by airport staff. Which is hilarious when you think about the fact we were an hour away from leaving the country. What did this poor sap think he was going to accomplish?
So that concludes the long and tedious story about our amazingly fun trip to our first Viva. I realized last night just how much we missed when I saw an official photo album and saw that I was present for the taking of only a small fraction of the pictures. Next year, we do more. LOTS more. It’s going to be amazing, and I can’t wait.
See ya!
Skirting The Issue 