A black tie gala at Wadsworth Mansion in Middletown, Connecticut? Yes, please! Engaged CT hosted a gala, like no other, for Massachusetts and Connecticut wedding professionals to come together and celebrate the year’s success. We all love what we do, we love the industry, we love our clients….and we love getting all glammed up to celebrate, too! As you can tell from the everything you are about to see below….we really do know how to have a good time!

I rented a dress from Rent the Runway, and wanted to share my experience with that, for those of you who are curious how it works! (I’ll share that at the end of the post…I want to start with the fun!)

The lovely ladies of SkinCatering Spa accompanied me to the gala, and we were greeted at the door by Michelle Girard Photography for photos in front of the Step & Repeat. You can see our photo below, but if you’re interested to see what everyone wore, be sure to check out the full gallery HERE.

After we got ourselves a drink, we could not resist the fun in Seth Kaye Photography’s photo booth! Some photos of us below, and you can see all the fun in the complete gallery HERE!

Toss in a little candid fun….

And we even made the Hartford Courant! Check it out HERE!

And….oh my gosh…you really need to consider this Slow Motion Experience from Epic Filmmakers for your next event! I experienced it first hand last night at the gala, and I underestimated how much fun this is. No….seriously. Take a couple of minutes to check out all of your favorite wedding professionals getting super silly…and you’ll see just what I mean…

Engaged CT Year End Gala || The Slow Motion Experience by Epic Filmmakers from Epic Filmmakers on Vimeo.

Having trouble viewing it here? You can go directly to the link HERE.

Now…for my experience with Rent the Runway. If you aren’t familiar with Rent the Runway, it is a site where you can rent high end gowns for very, very reasonable prices. Read on for my step-by-step experience:

After browsing the site, I decided on this dress:

As you can see…the price is really reasonable! And…guess what…since you don’t get to try the dress on, they allow you to rent a 2nd size for free! What is super helpful is, if you look in the bottom left corner of the screenshot above, you will see where it says “Customer Photos”. These are pictures that women renting the dress shared. They are candid about what they everyday clothing size is, and what size they actually ended up wearing in the rented dress. They give feedback about how it fit, what they liked, what they didn’t. SUPER HELPFUL!

You choose the date you want the dress to arrive, and they allow you to have the dress for 4 days. It arrives
in a box wherever you want it delivered, and arrives by UPS.

Inside the box, you will find a garment bag with your dress(es) in it, and some other goodies inside…
(that was a pleasant surprise! Who doesn’t love free lotion and gum!)

When you are ready to return it, they include handy instructions on how to do that, a return UPS package, and you get to keep the garment bag and hangers. When your package is ready to ship back, you simply drop off at a UPS drop location or call for a pick up. Rent the Runway even sends you emails reminding you when to send the dresses back.

So, so, so easy. Loved it. I would so do this again without question.

I hope you enjoyed this post as much as I had fun writing it!