Lakiamia's Diaria: The Vegas Edition, Part V

Wednesday was Formal Wear day. Again, I didn't have to be up at the butt crack of dawn, so the fam and I got to sleep in a little. As usual, we went to the Starbucks in the lobby and then to the breakfast buffet. After breakfast/brunch, Mom and Dad decided to visit the laundromat so Mom would have something clean for the rest of the week, and Rob decided to take advantage of the open bar by the video poker machines and see if he could add to his earlier winnings. I played with him for a little while but then I got bored and frustrated because I kept losing. So I went back up to the Cinderella gift shop to look at some more trinkets. But once again, the gift shop was closed, due to private talent viewings taking place in there all day. I wasn't even aware that that was going on. The guy running it explained that each of the contestants had the opportunity to watch the video of their talent from the night before. I think it was so we could verify our identity before sending the DVD's and pictures out, because I had to initial next to my name that I'd seen it. Amusingly enough, when the guy let me in the room, he asked if I was a teen contestant! It was a welcome change from people thinking I was a judge or someone's mother. 

So I got to relive my disastrous performance from last night. But, to my surprise, it didn't sound nearly as bad as I'd remembered it. I guess the others were right: aside from that one noticeable mistake, you couldn't really tell unless you knew the piece. So I felt a little better after that. I still had a couple of hours to kill before competition, so I went to the pool. There was a Cinderella dad there with his 2 children. I chatted with him and played little water games with the kids. (I also lost one of my fake toenails in the water, so I offered $10 to anyone who found it.) 

I had to take a shower and get ready for Evening Wear soon after that. Once again, my dress was fairly wrinkled on the bottom and my portable steamer wasn't doing the trick. I just had to hope that the judges would be too far away to notice it on stage. What I was most nervous about, though, was walking to the music. Judy had all of us practice walking at her house, but I still didn't feel secure about it. The trick about it is: it's all timed. You have to step up to the first X at the first harp swing, wait for the ding then walk to the middle X, do a little pageant turn (which I'd been having trouble mastering), wait for the next ding, walk to the front X, do another turn, then get back to the last X before the gong sounded. If you weren't at that last X when the gong sounded, you got disqualified. One of the girls had that happen to her last year, and she'd been doing really well in the competition up until then. 

In the restroom at Cashman, Judy was already there with Jennica and Jamie. She'd just finished trimming several inches off of Jamie's hair because it was too long to see the pièce de resistance on the back of her dress. I'd brought both my hot rollers and curling iron with me, so I asked Judy which one she planned on using that day. "Let's use the curling iron," she said, then whisked Jamie off to finish working on her and Jennica's hair while I put on my make-up and tried to get into my dress. That's no easy task! It takes a whole army of people to fasten all the eye hooks, zip up the back, and make sure the lining's pulled down far enough so it doesn't stick up out of the bodice. Once I had my dress on, I sat there for a while waiting for Judy to come back and do my hair. Finally, I went out to look for her. When she saw me, she gasped and said, "You don't have your rollers in yet?!" Well, as it turned out, when I'd heard her say "Let's use the curling iron," she was talking to Jamie, not me. This whole time, she thought I was in the bathroom with rollers in my hair. Meanwhile, I thought she was coming right back to do a quick style with the curling iron, so I didn't even have my rollers plugged in! We had a potential disaster on our hands right there. I had to run back and grab my curling iron, plug it into the wall, and wait for it to get hot. To make matters worse, no matter what she did, my hair refused to curl! She sent one of the other girls to find my mom to see if maybe she could help us. So I was standing there with a little entourage of stylists, all racing against the clock to fix me up in time. Judy, though, is nothing short of a miracle worker! She took the straw that is my hair and spun it into gold. We even got a chance to practice walking one more time. While we were doing that, one of the other contestants came running over to tell us that the timed music wasn't working and they were using regular background music instead. So we didn't have to worry about making it back to the X in time! We did find out, however, that the MC was going to meet us at the middle X and have us answer a short question about something from our bios. That was something we hadn't planned on, so my relief was short-lived. 

I got to watch some of the other contestants do their walks and answer their questions. I paid close attention to their every move. Some of them made it look so easy! Like yesterday, they were lining us up in groups and calling us back 10 at a time. While I was in line backstage and waiting to go on, the other contestants and I talked about what we thought they'd ask us. The majority of the questions seemed to be about what your ambitions are. I said I would put down money that they'll ask me about all my pets. 

Jennica was asked about her musical theatre degree, and Jamie was asked about her opportunity to be a role model as captain of her high school dance team. When it got to my turn, I stepped up to the first X, smiled big and posed, waited as he read my introduction then proceeded to the middle X, where the MC was waiting with a microphone and notecards. I tried to remember what the other girls had done earlier. Did they take and hold the microphone to answer their question, or did they just speak into it as the MC held it? Did they look at the audience while he was asking them their question, or look at him? Or look at the judges? Deciding to just go with the flow, I looked quickly around the audience, acknowledged the judges, then looked over to the MC as he read my question. He asked me, as a vocal performance major and aspiring opera singer, what is the one role I would most love to play? Well, I'd been so sure he would ask about my pets, I hadn't even thought about a possible answer to that question! I needed a couple seconds to stall as I searched my brain for an answer. 

"It's so hard to choose just one!" I laughed nervously as I took the mic in my hands. My mind was racing as I tried to remember the name of my favorite opera or aria. But I was drawing a complete blank, except for one name. "I'd love to play Madame Butterfly." I said. "I think it's a very beautiful, lyrical opera and a very challenging role, and I think I'd be good in it." That was it. I lied! Sure, I'd play Madame Butterfly if someone offered me the role, but in no way was it my dream role. If I'd been able to think, I would've said Marie in "The Daughter of the Regiment" or Christine in "Phantom of the Opera." Or I would've told them about how I intended to write my own opera one day and star in that. Not that it mattered after the fact, though. I smiled big as the audience applauded, the MC reminded everyone of my name and contestant number, then I posed one last time at the final X and walked off the stage. I couldn't relax just yet, though. In Cinderella, they do this thing called "collective judging" where they take 10 contestants at a time, have them all model their dress or casual wear outfit, then come back on the stage in a line and do a series of quarter turns so the judges can get a look at us from all angles. So, the 10 of us (actually 7 since there were only 37 contestants total and we were at the very end) went back on and stood facing the judges, smiling ear to ear. It was kinda like being in a police line up (not that I knew that from experience or anything!). When the MC gave us the cue, we were supposed to turn to our right. But I had a momentary lapse of judgment and turned slightly to the left before remembering myself and turning right. It wasn't very noticeable, unless you were watching me closely. (Ugh!  Right vs. Left has been tripping me up ever since my marching band days!) 

After the evening wear competition was over, they had us all form one long line out in the foyer, along the doors to the auditorium. I wasn't sure what we were supposed to be doing, so I asked Peyton, who was standing next to me. She explained that after each modeling competition, they bring the judges out for an up-close look. Wonderful. I hoped the wrinkles in my dress were gone and there was no lipstick on my teeth or anything. 

We stood there all smiley as the 3 judges meandered from one end of the line to the other, making little notes in their notebooks. I strained my vision to see if I could make out what any of them were writing. I saw a couple contestant numbers written down, and a few circled. Then one of the male judges started flipping through his pages and I caught sight of my bio sheet with my picture in the top left corner. There was a star by it!!!! My eyes went wide with shock and I glanced over to where my Mom and Dad were standing, trying to telepathically send them the message. After the judges were done with their close-up looks, they had us all gather on the steps in the foyer for our group photo. After that, we had to stay and rehearse our opening number for the finals on Friday. They told us it wouldn't take too long since our number wouldn't be anything tricky. 

They had us form 2 lines with the shortest girls in front up to the tallest girls in the back. (Even with my 4 1/2" heels on, I was about 3rd from the front!) One line entered from stage right and the other from stage left. They had us meet in the middle then turn and walk to the front of the stage, where 2 of the MCs were singing a duet to Josh Groban's "You Raise Me Up," then make a V-formation across the stage. After a step forward, a step back, a turn or two, raise our hands here, blah blah blah, the Tots were supposed to join us onstage at the end of the number. Each of us were assigned a Tot (some had 2 since there were more of them than there were of us) and when they came and stood alongside us, we held their hands and raised them up as the song ended. After that, they would announce the top 10 semifinalists and, if our Tot made it, we just nudged her out to center stage a little. My Tot's name was Shelby. She was a very pretty little girl about 6 years old with shiny blond hair. We all had to make sure we knew who our Tot's parents/chaperones were so we could take them over to them after the announcement of the top 10 if they didn't make it. So I met Shelby's mom and spent a while talking to her about Shelby's pageant experiences, as well as her own, while we waited to catch the bus back to the hotel. She'd obviously been in the game for a while. 

The Prince Gilbert party was that night and, once again, it wasn't a sit-down meal, but another cookies and punch affair. Judy had bought all of us matching T-shirts, shorts, and little hair bands with frogs on them to pull our hair back. The shirts were green with a picture of frog wearing a pink crown and the words "Trust me, I'm a princess!" The shorts were black with little silver crowns on them, and she'd glued pink rhinestones to the crowns on both the shirt and shorts. I even had cute little frog earrings to wear. My family decided to go to the Italian restaurant in the hotel since I would be at the Prince Gilbert party. I'd hoped to be able to join them later, but I had them order me some chicken parm to take back to the hotel with them, just in case. I'd assumed the food at the party would be just punch and cookies, so I wasn't prepared for the giant pizza slices they brought out and started serving. I tried to resist having one so I would still be able to eat my chicken parm, but in the end I succumbed to temptation because it looked so good! 

This party was geared a lot more towards the younger audience. "Prince Gilbert" was a character played by a frog puppet and later a person dressed in a giant frog costume. They invited girls to go up on stage and give him a kiss, hoping he would eventually turn into a prince. Truthfully, I was kinda bored at this party. Some of the other Women loved it, though, because it was like reliving childhood or something. By the time I got back to the room, I was too full to eat the chicken parm, and we didn't have anything to store it in. So it ended up being a total waste. But, oh well. Tomorrow I had Casual Wear at 8:30 am, so all I wanted to do at that point was rest up for it.