The LA Chronicles, Part 2: The Party (and the Party Dress)

This is the post with the pics of my husband's 40 birthday party in LA. For the new followers, we rented a villa in LA over Memorial Day weekend to celebrate my husband's milestone birthday as LA is his favorite city and you can read all about it here and here.

First of all I must tell you that I did buy a party dress at the last minute, two days before leaving. It just happened. When I saw this dress in the window of a store in my neighborhood I immediately fell in love with it but it isn't something that I would have normally bought because it's a dress that needs an occasion. It's the typical dress that you admire from afar thinking "What a beautiful dress, too bad that I don't have anywhere to wear it". Well, in this case, as you know, I had the occasion so it was difficult to resist, especially when I tried it on and saw that it fitted me like a glow (and in this case I really mean "glow" and you will see why). I did try to resist because it was expensive, more or less in the price range of the Milly dress that I showed you, but the store was running a Memorial Day promo and I got it with a % off. After all we only live once or, to put it as Woody Allen would, "is there an after-life and will they sell clothes?"

As I was the official photographer of the party I didn't get much photographed, so didn't my dress. I have a few pics from the party where you can get a taste of it but I wanted to post a pic of the dress by itself first. I took this pic in the fitting room (actually I wanted to send this pic to my husband but then I decided not to because he would have said that he didn't like it just to avoid me buying it) and it doesn't do the dress justice but I can't take another pic because I have stored it away already and I am lazy:



Granted, it is more "New York Art Deco" than "California Modern" (the sequin's pattern is clearly inspired by the Chrysler Tower) but that's actually one of the reasons why I decided to buy it: after all I am a New Yorker (sort of) and I see myself wearing this dress again during the holiday season in NY. And you will agree that it is appropriately "Hollywood Glam" (that was the dress code we came up with) with all those sequins.
My only hesitation regarded my husband, who can be very particular about clothes (about everything actually). In general I know what he likes and might dislike but sometimes he surprises me by focusing on a single detail that I can barely notice but makes him reject the whole thing. So I did bring the other dresses just in case because as I said before he was the birthday boy and I wanted to please him.
But he happened to like the dress so I was delighted to wear it. Here is in action:



But enough about the dress, let's talk about the party. I had hired a local catering company to take care of the food (we had passed tray appetizers around the pool and a buffet dinner) and I was a little bit worried because I picked the company without really knowing them (it was a small party and they were the more flexible of all the catering companies that I had contacted) and I did everything on the phone from New York. The guy was always busy and speaking with him one of the last days before leaving I found out that he had just catered big events like the premiere of Shreck IV and the American Idol after-party so all of a sudden I was less worried. It's true that in Hollywood all the big parties revolve around movies but of course it added to the "Real Hollywood" flair of our party.
So everything was great and my husband was really happy of the outcome.

The invitation said 7 pm because we wanted our guests to be able to take advantage of the beautiful view and the sunset (this is how we had setup the bar and that lady was our bartender):





Now, as I told you before I had to crop most of the pictures from the party to cut out my friends (the pic above is an example) and some of them are just unusable.
However I have to show you the following one because it is really a great picture and sums up the atmosphere of the party so I paint-brushed the faces (still a great picture IMO):



Here we were still having drinks; when the last guests arrived (our resident friends who were two hours and a half late) the buffet dinner was served and we all seat around a table on the pool side with a fire pit and it was just perfect. Here I am eating my dinner:



And what's a birthday party without a birthday cake? The cake was actually the only thing that the catering company screwed. I had ordered a special cake of course but the day of the party the caterer told me an absolutely unbelievable story about it (like that he had ordered a "cream" cake and they had made him a "green" cake so he had to throw it away). I think that he just forgot to order the cake and he had to go and buy one already made. At the beginning I was upset but it turned out to be one of the most delicious cakes that I have ever had (and the guests too), so I forgave him (I have paintbrushed my husband's name, that's not a white spot on the cake!):



And I owe you a picture of the birthday boy, but I know that he doesn't want to appear on the blog, so you will have to let your imagination free (he has dark hair):



And this last pic is from the day after when our friends came over with their kids for bruch and then everybody got in the pool. I forgot to add it at the end of the previous LA post put I just LOVE this picture (this camera has some cool features like the "sweeping panorama" one):



I hope that you enjoyed the LA posts. If you are interested in renting this villa I will be happy to provide you with the contact information.

My mother in law arrives this Saturday from Paris and she is going to stay with us until after the 4th of July. I don't know what the effect of her visit will be on my blogging, but I am going to spend a lot of time with her so I will probably have less time for blogging. But I promise not to disappear completely, if anything I will do quick OOTD posts.