Navy Ball 2018

It’s not every day that you get to attend a military ball! And much less so one for a sister service. With all of the branches here at the Naval War College though, we had the opportunity to attend the first of many balls over the weekend.

If you were following along with my Instagram Stories, you may have seen me complaining about our babysitter AND hair & makeup situation. I did the neighborly thing and hired a teenager from our street to watch the girls and a spouse from our community to do my hair and makeup. Both ended up dropping the ball very last minute, which left me scrambling.

P.S. Nothing good comes from neighborhood Facebook pages.

 

Thankfully, my friend and her daughter from our alley were able to step up at the last minute to save our butts with watching the girls.

John got his fancy new dress mess just in time for this event. I recycled the cleanest dress I could find from a past military ball. HA!

I now wish we had taken the professional photos, because these front camera iPhone photos are all we have.

Anyway.. This ball ended up being a bit different from all of the Army/Military Police balls that we’ve attended. I wish we had had programs at our table to help identify the differences, but here we go..

Right from the get go we noticed that there was no seating chart or assigned tables. Not sure if it was because it would be too complicated with all the students? We migrated towards a table with another Army couple sitting at it, and eventually a set of Army neighbors found us also. Our table was complete by a brand spankin’ new Navy officer with his date and an older Navy chaplain couple. We’re accustomed to standing by the table until the ceremony part starts, but that’s not how it seemed to work here. We follwed the crowd.

The part that the Army folks found most strange was the presentation and retirement of the colors. There was already a set of flags on the stage, but then the color guard presented a second set that we immediately retired..?

I want to say the toast was much shorter than we’re used to and we sat through it. The president of the university and guest speaker were both introduced with bell tolls, which was pretty neat! The guest speaker spoke just before dinner, which was pretty delicious! No dry chicken here!

There was no grog (probably a safe idea), but they did do a cake cutting with the youngest and oldest sailors in the room. The oldest guy joined the Navy before my parents were even born! The dessert was not cake, but I guess you can’t have the cake and eat it too? I crack myself up!

They had a live Navy band perform for the anthem and then a separate rock band that played for the dancing portion. The singer for the dancing portion was AMAZING! My feet managed to survive in heels, but my goodness, my knees!

All in all, it was a good time! We can’t wait to get to the Marine Corps ball next month! John also just put us in the lottery for the holiday ball at Rosecliff!