Discover Top Posts Tagged with #victory ball

@brcvo

Chardonnay was pretty impressed with the ball this year; the rest seemed more simple and cheap ever since the new president took power. But this time? It was like the good old days when snow ran the joint.

However, she had just come back from smoking a hooka in the lounge area near the fireplaces and was intrigued upon seeing the new escort trainee. From the looks of it, he was taking photos on his phone.

She approached him from behind and tapped his shoulder as he clicked on the capture button once more, “Excuse me, are you Bravo? I don’t think we’ve met before? I’m Chardonnay Cardiner, the Capitol escort!” she yelled over the loud music and chatter around them. She extended her hand.

#c:bravo #victory ball

Etienne Drian Victory Ball 1918

#Etienne Drian #Victory Ball #mask #fashion illustration #1910s

A Toast to Second Chances.

Five days, eighteen hours and thirty-two minutes. That’s how long it had taken her and a team of four very dedicated, slightly overworked and somewhat ruffled volunteers to pull this entire damn ball together and Caroline Forbes swore up and down that she would never take on a project like this so last minute ever again. Very little sleep, that’s what she’d had, stretched thin between menu planning, flower arrangements, visiting Spencer in the hospital, visiting Emma, organizing fittings, keeping various Mikaelsons at a comfortable arm’s length. But it was Spencer she had to thank, really, a spark of inspiration amidst a lot of coffee and color swatches trying desperately to decide what the colour scheme was. Her dress, maybe a lack of sleep and a lot of time spent in the obscenely yellow Huffle-whatever common room, but she didn’t have to be a regular visitor to the school to know that the Great Hall had never looked better than it did today. The place screamed Spring, and that had been her intention: bring the outside in, to take advantage of the early summer heat and God she had missed windows so much, missed colour. District Thirteen had been a coffin compared to this place, and she had felt buried there, under layers of concrete and steel and grey and it was a wonder to her how anyone could live there, even out of sheer desperation – how could anyone so much as breathe down there?

Colour was everywhere now. A dance floor had been cleared, the floors meticulously cleaned under Lydia’s watchful eye. She’d come to trust the girl from District Five in a surprisingly short amount of time, surprising mostly to the vampire who had never taken to strangers particularly easily, but here was someone with taste at least, someone she could depend on to get the job done. Their last joint effort was more than enough indication of their efficacy as a team, a party-planning force to be reckoned with yet. Tables were scattered evenly around the room, chairs wrapped with lavender sashes tied into a bow at the back, cream-coloured tablecloths with the benefit of gold-edged plates and cutlery for those who wished to sit and talk, enjoy the hors d’oeuvres circling the room. The menu wasn’t…a work of art, but she’d worked carefully with Lydia and the boy Peeta from District Twelve once he’d become involved in their planning to cater to everyone’s tastes. Comfort foods from every district had been converted to bite-size, cleaned up a little to make eating them neater. Sliders had been included too, ranging from classic burgers to something more gourmet for adventurous epicureans, and mini pizza bagels for children attending. Butterbeer (although Caroline was hardly a fan of the stuff), mead, fire whisky, and wine had been found in the kitchen cellars and otherwise generously donated from a pub in the village below the castle. These would float around on trays at the edges of the room, but she’d been sure to leave pitchers and decanters on every table. They’d found champagne too, but that would be iced until the toast.

No, the real masterpiece was Peeta’s cake. Twelve layers, twelve flavours, each painstakingly decorated by hand to represent each district. A joint effort between him and Clara Oswald – she would have to figure out a way to thank the two of them appropriately, in a way that didn’t involve cards and muffin baskets. The cake would be brought out after a moment of silence had been shared, a toast in the memory of everyone they had lost, be it in the Arena or elsewhere, and the list had been a lot longer than Caroline had expected when she came for the box of names before lunch today. The box was full, but she was determined to have every person mentioned, every name read, even if a moment of silence stretched into five. They all needed this. Everyone had lost someone by now, and tonight ought to be as much about celebrating their successes, because what they had accomplished with so few resources was truly remarkable, as it would be about remembering everyone they had lost to get here. There were those still grieving among them, and this moment would be a show of support as much as anything else. They were all in the same boat now.

In the mean time the dishes would sparkle in the sunset light coming in through all the windows Caroline had ordered open, and beneath the candles floating above – set to brighten as the sky outside and inside grew progressively darker. At the eleventh hour she had found Fallon, someone who knew how that damn ceiling worked, and three witches later the sky reflected in the vaulted stone would remain clear and starry, regardless of the clouds outside. The entire room smelled of flowers, vases filled with hyacinths that had been bent and pushed to wind up the sides of the glass, jars full of spicy lavender, bowls of floating lilacs, all mixed with cream petals and baby's breath and she had Rebekah to thank for her patience – more for dealing with Caroline’s perfectionism, breathing down her neck until the centerpieces looked just right than for how long it had taken to put them all together. The platform at the end of the room had been cleared of its chairs, the long harvest table set up as a dessert table that made her mouth water even now. Pastries filled with fruit and chocolate and jams, colourful cupcakes, custard tarts decorated with berries, chocolate-dipped strawberries, plates of some of the strangest candy she had ever seen donated by the shop in town. At the center was a chocolate fountain, platters of seasonal fruit from the school gardens for dipping. All around the treats they’d scattered yellow flowers and baby’s breath, to echo the gold of the plates and linen.

If the cake was Peeta’s masterpiece, this dessert table was Clara’s to be proud of, but the Great Hall was Caroline’s to beam at, immensely satisfied where she stood at the entrance, flanked by its mahogany doors. Behind the dessert table they’d set up for music, enchanted the instruments to play on their own in advance of everyone's arrival. They'd be greeted by candlelight and music. A runner rug leading the way into the Great Hall had felt too prom-like, and a series of lights outlining a walkway from the stairs to door looked too much like a runway. Instead she’d had the floating candles extended out into this hallway, floating just under where the moving stairs began to set the mood, for the sake too of anyone who might want to slip out of the hall for some time alone with himself or herself or with someone else. Somewhere in the castle a clock was chiming, a series of six deep booms to signify the hour. Despite its size, it was droned out somehow by excited chatter from the dormitory down the hall that only served to heighten her own anticipation of the evening. There was only more talking, muffled by stone floors and stone walls by still loud enough for her preternatural hearing to pick up, the further she moved upstairs, taking the opportunity to use human speed until she reached the fifth floor to get ready.

Every girl had found a dress on Wednesday, she'd made sure of it, and every man fitted for a proper suit on Thursday with the generous help of a tailor borrowed from Gladrags. People in glamorous clothes, celebrating life and second chances, that’s what tonight was about. She just wanted everyone to be happy. Even in the midst of all the crazy unhappy bits, they deserved that much.

#tcggreathall #Victory Ball