Dancing The Night Away, 1940's Style

Something Parker and I had been looking forward to for weeks was a Valentine's Day 1940's themed dinner dance put on by the Military Aviation Museum. It just screamed "fun, new experience" to us. Here's a fun fact about us: we love to dance! Here's another fun fact: we really aren't very good. We took country/western dance lessons in college and picked up about 3 moves, and those 3 moves are all we have. We love it though. We used to go dancing all the time in college, and I miss having a place close to just go dancing whenever you want. When we found out there was a dance on Valentine's Day, we were all in. And the 1940's theme? Yes, please.

The dance itself was located in an airplane hangar, a fact that definitely contributed to some of my husband's excitement over the evening. We had visited this museum before, but of course we did an abbreviated tour of the planes again and took the time to snap a few fun pictures. 

Two of our good friends joined us which made the evening all the more fun. I kept saying that the evening represented premium people watching. There were couples of all ages in attendance, and people really went all out with the costume portion. We learned traditional 40's-style dance steps, which we did for about 10 seconds before resuming our two-stepping. Hats off to those who have mastered swing dancing. We couldn't get the rhythm! 

I loved picking out our outfits for the dance. Parker was easy because he had a khaki uniform that looks fairly vintage and a leather bomber jacket that tied his look together. He even cocked his cover (hat) to the side like they used to. I thought he nailed it and looked so handsome! For my costume, I bought some black gloves and rented a little faux fur cape that was really fun to wear. My dress really wasn't 40's at all, but I was dying to wear it. I bought this dress from Target at the end of last year for Parker's squadron Christmas party. Life didn't quite go as planned last December as many of you know, and I ended up having surgery and spending some time in the ER the week of the party. So, no Christmas party for me. Therefore, I was so excited to wear the dress for the dance. I consider it a fairly conservative dress, but I'm sure it was much too short for the 40's. Even so, I loved it! I also tried out red lip stick for the first time since my 7-year-old dance recital. When in Rome...

This was such a cool thing to experience together and something we will always remember when we look back on our time in Virginia. So glad we stopped to document so we have all of these pictures! I I edited the above pictures to have a vintage feel for the full effect. Parker wanted to do the same, so here is his version of a 1940's photograph. Which is more vintage? Well, neither. They were taken in 2015 and edited on a Mac.

Such a fun night!