This Princess needs a lie down now

After much preparation ( I swear some of my college essays didn't take this much work ) the day of the Princess party was upon me. To get ready for this I had spent much time sourcing princess trivia for the quiz and collecting disney princess pictures for the guess the princess game and cutting them and sticking them. I picked out princess stories and prepared tiara pictures to colour in. I had emailed schools and arranged posters. I had bought two tiaras ( the first one was so tight it was like a migraine made of plastic, probably because it was made with a child's head in mind.) and nervously put a princess outfit together half worried I would be swamped by kids but also concerned it might end up just being me wandering around the shop totally overdressed with only a tiara to indicate I hadn't just gotten lost on my way back from some very fancy party. 

 Fortunately my fear of being the only one dressed up for an overly prepared party was not a genuine concern as before the start time Princesses started showing up and then kept showing up until I wasn't actually sure where I could put them. It takes a minute for it to sink that I'm actually supposed to be running this whole thing and I took a deep breath before diving head first into the chaos that is a room full of princesses. Last year I sort of managed the chaos, tried my best not to panic ( did badly at this) and didn't really get much going until a lot of the crowd had left so this year I was determined to manage the event or as much as I could do with 40 or so princesses and family in an enclosed space. I told the kids what we were going to be doing and then had to spend 5 minutes in discussion about the fairy doors we were selling. It had been set up outside the children's section and made to look like a tiny fairy had moved in. Then we started playing guess the Princess, where I stuck a picture of a princess on to a tiara and allowed everyone (except the child wearing it to see it) 
It seemed like a great game and mostly it worked out well except for a few cases where a very excited child would call out the name of the princess as soon as they saw it making the whole guessing part a bit pointless. Once we ran out of princesses to guess and the ones waiting were getting restless we moved onto my princess quiz. Not the toughest quiz but the whole idea was that even small kids would know most of the answers. Naturally a princess party where the kids left feeling stupid would not be a popular concept.
We had all the kids sitting down and agreed that I would call out the question and they were to put their hands up if they knew the answer. A good strategy in theory but we had a lot of over excited kids jumping the gun and not actually having the answer when called upon and then others who couldn't resist shouting out the answer. When I mentioned their favourite movies they would shriek excitedly like drunk concert goers hearing their home town mentioned by the band.  I actually managed to drag that out quite a while so I was pretty pleased by that.

 Seeing as they were already sitting I very smartly decided to read them my favourite princess story (the princess and the pig, in case you were wondering). Reading a story to a crowd of very excited kids is very tough but luckily I had practice from other events and I actually managed to hold the attention of most throughout by asking questions and talking about what we saw in the pictures. With that done I made the executive decision to call the party to a halt ( an hour after it started) and sent the little munchkins home with a goodie bag and a tiara to colour in. At this point I was very sweaty (not at all princess like) and my head felt like it was going to explode plus I was physically and emotionally drained. By the time I had reassembled the children's section it was time to go home and all I felt like doing was lying in a dark corner. But I think the kids had fun so I guess we'll call it a success for now.

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