Carolina Kei Meetup

If you didn't know already, I'm part of a J-fashion group called Carolina Kei. It's a group of people from all over North and South Carolina who are enthusiastic about Japanese Fashion. With that being said, the group has mainly been trying to do one big meetup every season; however, we also have people in the group hosting their own meetups. I happened to have gone to a total of 2 meetups so far. The first one being the very first CKei meetup back in summer, which was an official meet (you can read more about that one here) and this one that I went to this past Saturday in Wake Forest, NC.

Shironuri coord!

Wake Forest is a little under 3 hours via car from my home location, so I had to get up really early. The meetup was scheduled for 2pm; however, it was known beforehand that the town was going to have a parade at 12:30. With that in mind, I wanted to make sure to get there in enough time to deal with crazy traffic and closings of streets. I decided to go to the meetup with my friend Patti (ang3licdr3amer). I woke up around 6, then made breakfast. By the time that we left it was already 9. Getting ready took awhile, because I wanted to try out a style that I've been interested in for awhile: shironuri. If you're not familiar with shironuri, I highly suggest looking up Minori.

Since it's close to winter, I wanted to do a winter coord. Also, since I knew a parade would be in town, it would be more likely that shironuri would be accepted. So, beforehand, I had been working on my outfit. I customized a bunch of clothing that I found at the Goodwill. After that, I wanted to make something extremely me, so I created a scarf out of teddy bears, which people seemed to really love. The teddy bears worked great, considering that I wore teddy bears on my tights too. Keeping with "winter" in mind, I decided to use snowflakes.

I originally had intentions of wearing a mini-hat that I made; however, I was having major issues getting it onto the wig and with the clock ticking, I nixed that idea, which is a shame, since I really liked the hat. Instead, I lazily threw snowflakes in the wig.

I originally was going to use a different wig as well, but I didn't like how the color clashed, so I went with a simple blonde.

After getting the outfit on, I immediately worked on makeup. The makeup itself is what took the longest. I started with BBCream, then placed white liquid foundation on, followed by white foundation powder. After that, I touched up areas with a white eyeliner and white primer. Then, I decorated a bit.

We ended up making good time and ended up in the area a little before 12, which was great, since we got a good spot for parking in the parade parking slot. We then walked to the general area and it really was street fashion, for all sorts of people there to watch the parade surrounded us, asking us for photos and such. There also were people letting us know that this is interesting, because the people of Wake Forest don't dress like that. lol.

The Start of the Wake Forest Christmas Parade.

We watched the parade and afterwards went to The Olde English Tea Room. Upon entering, they escorted us to a nice location that was beautifully decorated with Christmas decorations. It was absolutely stunning to see. The menu and napkin were arranged quite nicely on the table and I really adored the tea cups. I'm a HUGE tea set fanatic, so tea anything makes me happy.

We waited a little bit for the majority of people to show. We had quite a nice little group. Everyone was so beautifully dressed too! There were several lolitas, then two shironuri, and dolly kei. All styles that I love. My friend from college, Carl, decided to show, since he loves learning about culture and such. He was fascinated to learn about J-fashion and is beginning to research it more now.

My tea pot was green! My favorite color!

Top Left: Peppermint Tea. Bottom Left: Strawberry Soup. Right: High Tea Meal.

I decided that I wanted to have high tea. High tea at The Olde English Tea Room is Complete Four-Course‏ Meal: Soup, Tea Sandwiches, Petite Desserts, and Beverage for $21.95. Such a great deal in my opinion!

For the beverage, I went with peppermint tea. It was absolutely delicious. I had way too much fun placing lumps of sugar in my tea.

Anyways, for my soup, I got a delicious strawberry soup. I wasn't disappointed in the least! Strawberry soup is a cold soup and has a dessert-like quality to it. The soup was topped with a bit of whipped cream that you could mix in.

Since four of us ordered the high tea, they brought out food out on tiered leveled trays. On the bottom level each of us got four sandwiches. The sandwiches included tuna salad, egg salad, chicken salad, and cucumber. All very delicious; however, I must admit that I find my homemade cucumber sandwiches to be much better. hehe. The middle level included our scones with a choice of jam or devonshire cream to use. I ordered the white chocolate berry scone. I never had devonshire cream before, so I was excited to try it out. LET ME TELL YOU. Devonshire Cream is my newest obsession. If they had the option, I would had purchased a whole tub to bring home. It's amazingly delicious! Sweet, but not too sweet. I feel that it complimented the scone perfectly. I also think that the cream would go perfect on breakfast foods such as pancakes and waffles.

The top layer were our desserts. They included cheesecake, chocolate-covered strawberries, biscotti, and cookies. All really tasty and perfect for the finish of filling me up.

Of course, a meetup's not complete without a fun group photo!

The whole group who were dressed! Everyone looked absolutely stunning!

Rachel looked fantastic in her dolly kei coord! Absolutely did the style justice!

A couple of the lolitas and the dolly kei! All so beautiful!

My full coord on left and ang3licdr3amer on the right. I made the floral hairpiece that ang3licdr3amer wore.

After the meetup, a bunch of us decided to go shopping in the small town. Of course, that means we must hit up the candy shop! So many delicious candies were there! I bought $20 worth! And the shopkeeper was so sweet! She loved the fashion!

The antique shops in the area were fabulous! If I had more money, I would had purchased all the tea sets, china sets, and jewelry there. Yet, I only came out purchasing a gift for my mother - a gravy boat with a classy plate on it. I also accidentally haggled and got the gift even cheaper! Kind of proud of that accomplishment.

Yet, after awhile, Patti and I knew that we had to leave. So we bid everyone farewell and left around 5:30. On the way home, we hit up Arby's, since we both saw the sign and started craving it. Got back home around 9pm. Had such a great time!