The Casual Costumer: Dragon Con 2013: Evening at Bree

This year, because of our LOTR costumes, we spent a lot of time with the Tolkien Track at Dragon Con. Friday night was the Evening at Bree, an event with music by Emerald Rose. The special guests at the event were Sylvestor McCoy (Radagast in The Hobbit and the Seventh Doctor), Graham McTavish, and William Kircher, who played Dwalin and Bifur in The Hobbit, respectively. Matt entered Eomer in the costume contest. His entry was announced by Sylvester McCoy! (Please ignore the bad quality. My iPhone refused to focus and I didn't want to miss it.) That was super exciting! But then, Emerald Rose selected Matt as Band's Choice, and Graham McTavish, Matt's favorite Dwarf, was the one who announced it! (You can see it here around 13:58.) I know it sounds a bit cheesy, but we are both over the moon about not only the win, but that Radagast and Dwalin said our names!

Before I go any further, here are our final costumes (and I'll try to remember to post about the fabric portion of Matt's costume soon):

I can't even begin to describe how amazing it was to attend Evening at Bree. We had a blast and met a lot of great new people, and met up with others like Celtic Ruins Costumes, whom we've followed for the past few years. Everyone looked brilliant, and we especially loved all of the dwarves. The talent at Dragon Con is unbelievable, and we both came out of the con this year feeling extremely humbled.

It is a bit disconcerting to me that most of the dwarves are played by women, as I am infatuated with Richard Armitage. I have Thorin on my iPhone screen so that every time I turn it on, I see his gorgeous eyes staring back at me. There were two unbelievably good female Thorins, and their costumes made me feel all confused ... (okay, not really, but I did have to remind myself several times that it would be highly inappropriate to flirt with them).

Apparently, I need to make myself clear with my previous statement. My comment about the dwarves being "disconcerting" was a joke - I was so excited to have my photo taken with Thorin, who I am so in love with, and I felt a bit silly because I was practically drooling on her. I have zero problems with crossplay, whether it's women dressing as male characters, or men dressing as female characters. Zero. For God's sake, I play a MALE Clockwork Droid! I understand the appeal of doing a character of the opposite sex straight OR as a femme version, and I support it all. I wasn't suggesting that women shouldn't play male characters, or that it's wrong in any way. I just found it funny that I knew that most of the dwarves were women, and yet my brain was still like, Thorin = hot. I'm sorry if some people find crossplay to be actually disturbing or bewildering or confusing, but I am NOT one of those people. So, I apologize for offending anyone that thought I was saying that women shouldn't cosplay dwarves.

Speaking of flirting, I had to practically peel the women off of Matt. He's a good-looking man, but in that Eomer costume - dear lord.

Matt also attended the Middle Earth 80's Dance Party, and I was there briefly as Shadow Weaver.

I should mention that both events were streamed lived from theonering.net, and they have the videos archived here. Unfortunately, the clip of Matt dancing with the iPad seems to be broken, but yeah, Matt was given the iPad so that he could dance with the virtual partygoers. I left that party wondering what had happened to my quiet, introverted husband! I'm sorry I went to another panel before joining Matt at the party, because I missed Legolas dancing to They're Taking the Hobbits to Isengard! You can enjoy it starting around 21:20 here.

Enjoy the photos that we took at Evening at Bree!