DC: Attend an Inaugural Ball

Since I'm a graduate student at George Washington University, I get the opportunity to do some fun things in DC. It's also a good opportunity for me to give GW all my money. But I figured this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I wasn't going to pass it up. 


GW hosts an Inaugural Ball - yes, one of those fancy black tie affairs - that 5,000+ students/faculty/family members can attend after the President gets publicly sworn into office. GW sold out of all 5500 tickets in less than 24 hours. I bought mine over the phone at 7:30 in the morning because I didn't want to risk them being gone by the time I got to campus around noon.


The ball is considered "unofficial" because the President doesn't stop by, but that doesn't stop it from being fun and fancy. We were at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, with some gorgeous chandeliers and so many rooms of entertainment that they gave us maps and had signs everywhere (and we still got completely turned around at points).


The entertainment we enjoyed were live bands of all kinds. The one above is Prime Time, which was our favorite room. They played covers from Footloose to Moves Like Jagger and anywhere in between. At the very beginning, the girl on stage brought her microphone over to me and I got to see some backup vocals for Tonight's Gonna Be A Good Night. So fun!


The other room we spent some time dancing in was the swing/big band room. Eric isn't much into that kind of dancing (crazy unfortunate for me, since I love ballroom), but he humored me with a few dances when we needed a break from the pop music. This room also had  this awesome decoration of the Washington Monument in it.


We also listened to jazz while we ate mini foods (like duck roll ups, steamed bbq pork buns, brie and crackers, and edamame dumplings) and drank our free (cough, included) soda. They were charging $9 for an alcoholic drink...and for further proof that I go to a rich-kid school, almost every bartender in every room was busy all night - and there were 8 bartenders in the main rooms. Yeah. Once in a lifetime experience though, right? ;)


Humor aside, we had a pretty good time last night, despite the fact that it was crazy cold and windy on our trek home (we took the metro in, which is around an hour ride each way). It definitely was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for us and I am very glad that we were able to go, since I know a lot of other people wouldn't have been able to. We didn't go into town for the actual inauguration or parade (I mean, did you see how many people were there?!), so this was a fun way to get to celebrate living near DC during an inaugural year!




DC: Attend an Inaugural Ball DC: Attend an Inaugural Ball Reviewed by Maria on 11:40:00 AM Rating: 5

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