Easter Frills at Annie's Meet

Easter is this weekend coming and I am excited. To have an early Easter celebration, I joined the Manchester comm last weekend for an afternoon tea – it feels like a while since I went to Manchester for a meet.

| BtSSB Polonaise Brillante ~ Ideas of Maiden ~ Apron JSK and OTKs | Infanta overblouse | Cutie Creator headbow | Advent Store headdress | My Inspiration brooch and long necklace | handmade bracelets | waist ribbon off Haenuli's Whipped Cream Kitty | offbrand shoes and red necklace |

Long time no false eyelashes. Or this wig, for a fact.

It still amazes me how long it takes to do simple makeup like this. Blending takes forever, people!

And for the occasion I turned into my best Polish self and lived the dream through my new dream dress. This definitely isn’t the most Polish I could be, there’s room left for improvement, but that’s for another time. It wasn’t even that massively shoehorned into the Easter theme of the meet, since the colours are very spring-like and there’s lots of flowers – or I could just pose as a traditional Polish Easter egg (Google ‘kraszanki’ or ‘drapanki’ for those made with the most traditional techniques). This is already my favourite coordinate of the year, definitely top 10 favourite coords ever and a strong contender for top 5 ever.

The meet was held at Annies, which may not have had the most Easter-y décor, but it was really pretty nonetheless. The fact that it’s literally tucked away in a tiny street means that you have to look for it, so no random people looking through the window and everyone in was there because they had a booking. Our hosts made up for the lack of seasonal décor by giving everyone a chocolate egg, a glitter egg with sweeties inside and a fluffy little chick. Since I wore green, I swapped things around until I completed my collection in green.

A holy trinity of green Easter things.

What was great was that there were so many of us, I think around 17 people? Given that this was just going out for afternoon tea kind of meet, no ILD grandness or anything, it was amazing to see so many people both new and old. To anyone out there thinking that the lolita/J-fashion community in the North of England is not “popping”, I say go suck on a bag of bricks. Apologies for the digression, back to regular programme.

As far as the tea spread itself goes, I was actually underwhelmed. Many around me have enjoyed theirs, but I only liked the cakes. The egg sandwich, usually one of my favourites, was way too salty (I’m a lolita, I have enough salt inside me, don’t need any extra on my food), there was too much mustard on the ham one for my taste and only the beef one was palatable. I can’t comment on the scone, as I couldn’t manage mine, I got quite full from the sandwiches and sweets, although it was very big. It’s a shame because for the same price or less I have definitely had much, much nicer afternoon tea spreads. Anyhow, at least the sweets were genuinely lovely and the staff were lovely and attentive (made sure to get everyone’s dietary requirements down first, though some people struggled to get a tea refill).

Looked great, had better ones though.

After chilling inside and even taking some pictures, despite it being very dark indoors, we headed outside for more pictures. Our first stop was just outside an arcade entrance just outside Annies, which had the most gorgeous Easter display. Such a shame that that turned out to be a day a lot of douchebags also decided to venture outside – I do not remember the last time we have had to deal with a street paparazzi being this bad. Most of them were just regular arseholes, who moved on when being told off, but there was this one who got defensive and aggressive as soon as he was told ‘Please, can you not take pictures without asking’ and wouldn’t even back off when someone else started filming them.

The Easter display behind me was too cute, I want it in my house!

Mother Easter is here!

Still, we didn’t let one sorry excuse for a human being ruin our day, got more pictures there and then went over to the cathedral, which had some cherry blossoms around it. More pictures ensued and we even found some pansies in pretty much the same colours as those on my dress, so of course that had to be documented.

Purple pansy? Check. Yellow pansy? Check. Only missing the red and pink.

Oh look, pansies!

If I could change one thing about that meet it’d be the weather. We are now past mid-April and we’re only just getting some warm weather (after a brief spell maybe a month back?). I am sick of having to layer everything and sick of being cold. I want to enjoy my impromptu hanami without having to wear gloves and a warm coat. I. Am. Sick. Of. It! The weather forecast predicts some actual warmer temperatures for Easter itself, so keep your fingers crossed, please.

Pretty from up close.

Pretty all around.

A genuine candid.

In the meantime, I will look into creating that 110% Polish version of this coordinate. I am missing only two pieces (maybe three, depending on which version I go for) and have a major inspiration for a photoshoot (only Mana-sama knows if I’ll actually be able to ever realise that). Let me also leave you with this ‘ita to lolita’ comparison for some light giggles. The pictures were taken just over 20 years apart, my pre-school had this thing when they made us wear the national dress for all functions and events. Truth be told, in my memory the dress itself was much nicer than this (closer to the lolita coordinate), but clearly the gigantic plastic bows for decorating presents instead of ribbons that my crafty Mum adorned me with have blinded me to all the rest that wasn’t quite right with the original outfit. Remember, every lolita was a newb once, so accept concrit, learn from your mistakes and improve – else you’ll forever be in your ita phase. :P

Take 20 years to learn from your mistakes like me, if you have to, but bloody learn from them.