Kimono Dressing

I was so excited to not miss this year's Kimono Dressing put on by the Officer's Wives Club here at Yokosuka. I missed it last year which made me really sad. One of the other mom's from Emma's kindergarten class put it all together and invited some of us school moms to join her group. I was a little late in arriving (because I had forgotten to put the chicken in the crockpot for our RS mtg that night) so I missed being able to pick which kimono I wanted. Most of them were already taken and many of the girls were already in the middle of getting their kimonos put on by the sweet Japanese ladies. I was left with this nasty peach colored kimono...yuck. That thing would have completely washed me out because I am the pastiest person in the world. I kindly asked the Japanese ladies if they had any more kimonos and I think they took pity on me because they brought out three bags that had not been laid out. There was this beautiful dark purple kimono with pink flowers and I knew it was the one. Before getting my kimono on I quickly sat down to get my hair done because no one was in line. It was a good thing too because the line got pretty long for hair after the first big set of girls were done getting their kimonos on. I had two ladies work on putting my kimono on and the entire time I kept hearing them say how beautiful this kimono was. It was like they had never seen it before. It was fun to watch them dress me. Believe me when I say that there were a ton of layers that went into this. By the end I felt like I had on a bunch of girdles minus the discomfort. We had fun taking pictures of each other and shuffling around in our tiny sandals...because that is really all you can do is shuffle. I finally understood why Japanese ladies in kimonos shuffle. I wish I could have kept that Kimono on longer because it was so pretty but alas, we had to change before eating lunch.