The Jane Austen Festival 2013

The Jane Austen Festival’s Costumed Promenade in Bath, England 2013

It was the loveliest of September Saturdays!  The weather was forecast to be grey and rainy, but instead the 600 plus costumed participants were greeted by warm sun shining down on the cobblestone streets and Georgian Bath buildings.  In a crowded section of the Royal Crescent, one massive group of historically clad Jane Austen fans mingled with Regency “officers” in full military apparel, while waiting for the town crier to announce the official start of the 2013 Jane Austen Festival’s promenade.  If it hadn’t been for the iphones and cameras which were flashing through the crowd at an alarming rate, you might have thought it was a cast of extras from a Jane Austen adaption!

Then the parade was officially underway, and the whole lot of us wound our way slowly through the city streets, where hundreds of local onlookers were lined up with cameras to photograph their town being overtaken by “Austenites”!

For this event I wore the same “Georgiana Darcy” gown which was made of point d’espirit netting lace from the Regency drawsting gown pattern at www.sensibility.com, and which I also wore to “Rosings Park” and to the interior of “Pemberly“.  This time, however, I added a double-faced gold satin ribbon sash, and my brown ruched bonnet from the Elizabeth Bennet outfit.

The parade lasted for around an hour, and we ended in this lovely, sunken in garden which we accessed by descending some ancient stone stairs…

It was a lovely time to chat with costumers and other Regency enthusiasts!

And of course we had to get a group shot of the entire Sense & Sensibility Costume Tour group!

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After that I met up with Aurora whose wonderful blog is quite famous in Regency circles, and together we went to the historic Pump Room restaurant for lunch.  Aurora and I had been emailing for months before the event, so it was so exciting to finally meet her in person!  We had so much fun chatting about how we got into costuming, the Jane Austen Festival activities, and much more.

 And I was so excited for this next shot!  If you have ever watched Persuasion, you will certainly recognize this very spot from the film!  This is the fountain from which folks in Jane Austen’s day would “take the waters” – a tradition of drinking sour-tasting mineral water which supposedly had medicinal qualities.  I wasn’t brave enough to actually drink any, which was probably a wise choice as some friends who did try it didn’t feel particularly well afterwards. 😉

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From there several of us headed back to the Bath Abbey hotel for a little rest, while I hurriedly typed up a blog post (this one here, in fact) in my hotel room.  My friend Anita from the group kindly snapped this shot of me while I was typing away on my laptop.  If Jane Austen had a laptop she would have looked something like this.  🙂

Then we dashed off to the dance practice in anticipation of the grand costumed ball that evening.  The caller was much too quiet for us to hear her in a room that large, and the general sense in the room was one of chaos. 🙂  But nonetheless we did get the gist of what we were supposed to be doing, and it helped quite a lot in feeling prepared for such an important event that evening.

After a wonderful afternoon of twirling away, it was time to head back to the hotel to prepare for the monumental events of that evening.  Getting ready for the ball was so marvelously fun, but I will wait until next time to share more photos of my ball gown and the steps that went into making it. 

Hope you all enjoyed this “trip” to Bath!

Happy sewing,

Katrina