Commandant's Reception

Last night we got all gussied up, Chris in his dress blues and me in a knee length cocktail dress, the very same dress I wore as a bridesmaid in my girl friend's wedding a few days ago, haha.
With these types of "formal" events, it's always kind of difficult to gauge what we ladies are supposed to wear. Some were saying formal, some were saying cocktail. In my world, formal and cocktail are very different terms. Formal means long dress and cocktail means short or knee length. I'd rather be over dressed than under dressed so I figured my bridesmaid dress would be totally appropriate.

The reception was at the Engineer Museum in one of the ballrooms and since two of my friends had just attended one of these, I had the inside scoop on what was in store for us. My friend Ashley reassured me that my knee length dress would be 100 percent fine because she herself wore a similar dress and she told me wear comfy shoes since we would be doing a lot of standing and to eat a lil something before we left the house to tide me over.

Good thing I listened to her on all accounts because, no offense, this event was lame! Hardly any Capt.'s brought their spouses! What also erked me was the fact that there were no tables or chairs. Okay there were five super small tables that were ill placed. How are you supposed to hold your purse and coat (don't all formal functions have coat checks?), a drink, plate of food and socialize? 

Anyhoo, at first everyone just stood around and chatted and waited to go through the receiving line. THIS time Chris knew better after the disaster that was the COC in Hawaii and went through it WITH me this time!

We were introduced and shook hands with a Colonel, Command Sargeant Major, and Commander of the Engineer Brigade here. It was super weird that their spouses weren't beside them. The ECC also changed up the event and only half of the Small Groups attended. The other half will have there own, next week.

Shortly after one of the Colonel's wives came up to me and another spouse and invited us to a separate room with the other spouses to chat while Chris and his colleagues heard from the senior command team.

All of the senior spouses had brought a bottle of wine and began pouring everyone a glass, which I thought was a nice little ice breaker/effort to make everyone feel comfortable. Then each senior spouse introduced herself and told us a little bit about themselves (how many years married, how many kids, how many moves, time with the Army, some words of wisdom. Since we only had 15 ladies, we went around and introduced ourselves.

Over all, I did meet some new ladies who are also stay-at-home dog moms and got some good info about Texas, so this social event wasn't a complete waste of time.