My Mom was sorting through a box and randomly and quite bizarrely found these photos filed away. We didn't know we had them!
They range from about 1998-2001/2ish. Not entirely sure though, but definitely around those times anyway.
The first one is my first ever solo dress. It was made by Siopa Rince, and I recall designing some of it and coming up with ideas for it. I used to mess around on paint and make the knotwork and was adament that it had to have a tara brooch on it. There was a class dress of another school who had the best dresses ever with Tara Brooches on. I LOVED them back then. So I HAD to have one on my dress.
We were orginally going to choose dark blue with light blue, but in the end settled on the jade green - which as a combination we LOVED. We we were sad when I outgrew this dress and it's still to this day my favourite dress. (I think everyones first dress is their favourite!) So much so that I saw it on ebay and tried to buy it back! But seriously, we used to get it out just to stare at the intricate embroidery and use to feel the velvet. It was so soft!
On the day it was delivered, I tried it on and cried my eyes out proclaiming that I would NEVER dance in it because it was TOO HEAVY. My Mom was not impressed! haha.
It was a great dress though. We ended up ditching the oversized headdress in the end and switching to a smaller gold backed tiara which looked much better.
The others are assorted ones of our Ceili and Figure team at various majors. You can probably see how the class dresses changed slightly through the years. The earliest one is the British Nationals from 1998/1999. I was 7 or 8 years old then and in our figure as we were dancing literally EVERYONE'S headbands flew off! I think we won, but we were the only team entered!
The others are from the Great Britains (back when it was held at Pontins!). And the last photo is the Midands Region Qualifier.
As you can see, these were the days BEFORE sock glue and just before/at the start of wigs coming in. The last photo in particular is the 'first' style of full head wigs that were available. One of the girls in the photo has a Banana Clip wig in (remember those!?) which were popular at this time. I can recall the uproar they caused back then. Strange how now EVERYONE has them!
Just thought I'd share!
Claire.
