May Day Celebrations!

Quite of few of the towns and villages around here have May Day celebrations and every year we attend a village fete or two – the kids love the singing, dancing and especially the cake eating! (Actually, that’s my favourite part too!) However, this year we took things one step further and organised our own May Day celebration! I’m not sure who first had the idea, but my sister Judy liked the idea so much that she volunteered to organise it and hold it in her garden. The weather wasn’t great, but that didn’t matter as my brother Ed provided a large marquee for the day (acquired for his wedding some years ago) and festivities were held under cover.

Dozens of friends and family turned up, contributing lots of lovely food and drink. And Judy had the great idea of having a knights and princesses theme for the kids, who mostly turned up in appropriately themed fancy dress.

Simon (who loves fancy dress) wore his boy’s medieval crusader knight costume from Cachet Kids which comprised: a top with padded shoulders and a blue lion design on the front (not red, like the picture below), trousers, arm covers, chainmail look helmet, boot covers and a sword. He looked so cute!

Keith (who loves to play the rebel) came dressed in a smart boy’s five piece black striped suit set from Cachet Kids and wore a cardboard Alan Sugar mask from Play.com. When people asked why he’d come as Alan Sugar he replied that he’d come as Sir Alan Sugar, the knight! But when his friend Michael pointed out that Alan Sugar had been made a lord and wasn’t known as ‘Sir Alan’ any more, he went home to check on his computer whether a lord was still a knight!

Sarah and Crissy came dressed as princesses with fabulous costumes from Cachet Kids. Sarah wore a pink princess Frilly Milly dressing up costume with several layers of soft wavy net, a velveteen bodice and a fluffypink marabou feather boa. She also wore gorgeous princess glitter girl’s pink party shoes and a faith communion tiara.

Sarah wore a first Holy Communion princess dress with net bolero and handbag. And to complete the look she wore girls white party shoes and a diamante glitter Communion Alice band. They both looked absolutely beautiful.

The celebration itself was a lot of fun. As well as all the great food and drink, there was improvised Morris Dancing (led by my brother Dave), a Maypole dance that descended into tangled chaos and the crowning of a May Queen. We had a vote and Dave was elected May Queen in recognition of his outstanding hanky waving abilities! In addition, Judy bought some space hoppers, plastic buckets and inflatable swords and we had a bouncing jousting competition, which Ben won! The object was to bounce around knocking the plastic buckets off the other competitors’ heads with your inflatable sword and the last competitor with a bucket on his/her head was the winner! I knew that having a large head that was just the right size and shape to jam into a bucket would one day pay off! (Only joking Ben, if you’re reading this!) Judy also hired a bouncy castle which was a lot of fun for the kids (the adults were too big and heavy to use it) and she bought some dragon piñatas which were great fun for children and adults alike. You never really grow out of enjoying bashing things with sticks and eating sweets; and the idea of combining the two into one activity was pure genius! However, I had the most fun watching Uncle Jim repeatedly missing his dangling dragon after six pints of lager, getting more and more frustrated with every unsuccessful swipe. In the end he grabbed the piñata and pulled it down, nearly bringing the whole marquee down with it!