You might judge us for this, but the primary reason for our trip to Disneyland in April for those specific dates was so that Sarah and I could go to our first ever Dapper Day.
If you don’t know what Dapper Day is, it kinda is what it says on the label, its a semi-official event that takes place in the Disney parks, or at least Disneyland, Walt Disney World and, more recently, Disneyland Paris, where the idea is that guests visiting the parks don their best clothes and spend a day looking utterly fabulous in the most magical and happiest places on Earth. They take place twice a year, in spring and fall, and the dates and other info can always be found on the Dapper Day website.
So anyway, we wanted a Disneyland trip, and we knew we wanted to do Dapper Day, so this trip was about a year or so in the planning so we knew the dates, and the Sunday of our trip, which was also our final full day, was Dapper Day, although the Dapper Day Expo (which we didn’t go to) was all weekend.
The hardest part, of course, was deciding what to wear. There’s no official rules on how you should dress, but a lot of people tend to lean towards 20th century style, and I decided to go a little bit traditional with wanting a 40s-50s style dress. After a lot of thought, I settled on Steamboat Willie as my outfit inspiration – mainly because I have a serious attachment to it, but also because I figured in Disney’s original park, I wanted to do an original character. I found the perfect dress pattern to use and whipped up this little velvet and cotton drill number with the biggest skirt EVER, paired it with some black and white brogues (because I don’t really do heels) and added a knotted headband, and voila!
To sum up the whole day in one word, it was magical. Considering it is just essentially a day spent in the parks, just with the added dress-up optional clause, it just felt so much more wonderful, whether that was because we were dressed up or because everyone else was, I don’t know. I was truly amazed at how big an event it really is; I mean, considering such a huge proportion of my Instagram feed are Disney people, of course I see lots of people talking about it, but there was always a chance that that’s just because I follow all of those people, but honestly the people in ‘regular’ clothes were the minority in the parks.
Really, we spent the whole day hanging out with friends, taking photos and just generally taking in the atmosphere, and of course checking out what everyone else was wearing! Walking around the parks was like a fashion show, and everyone is looking at everyone to see how they’re dressed – but in an excited way. Compliments are being thrown around like confetti and total strangers want to take photos with and of you and chat about your outfits and its just such a pure environment.
There’s also a bunch of cute photo opportunities, and even some unofficial meet-ups happen on the day, and its just an entirely great and unique experience, so I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who’s been considering making a trip for one, or who has a trip coinciding with a Dapper Day!
Lottie Does 