Big Bang Gala 2014

This past Thursday was the annual Big Bang Gala at the California Academy of Sciences. It's essentially a large fundraising event that the museum hosts every year. It's always a lot of fun, and includes some great food and open bars set up around the museum (plus a large candy bar where you can fill up bags with candy, which is always personally my favorite part). All in all, it's a really fun event, and because so many of my coworkers (aka friends I've met from work) go it's always a ton of fun for me.

I had been planning to wear this dress to the event for months now. I found this dress at the Zara sale (I swear my wardrobe doesn't actually consist of as much Zara as it seems like it does from what I've been posting recently) this past winter. I had been doing one last swoop of the Zara sale and this dress was just sitting there, the only one of its kind left. It was a size XS, and I'm usually a S or M, but I tried it on anyways because its price tag was too good to resist. Amazingly, it fits me like a glove. It has the most beautiful hand sewn beaded flowers on it, and because it's silk it's really warm and comfortable. One friend even commented on how soft it was. Because the dress has the beads, I really didn't feel like I needed to add anything else to it. So I wore it with my block heeled sandals and called it a night. Can I just mention how much I feel like a version of Lady Loki in this above photo? I think it's the green hues. I was loving this green room. It was technically the donor area but opened up to everyone around 10pm. It was the only room that had champagne! None of the other bars did. I couldn't believe it.

I tried to do that Vivetta SS '14 inspired cat eyeliner on my eyes that I had mentioned in a previous post, and I put on a coral lipstick which isn't too visible in the photos, although that was the idea, for it to look somewhat natural. Maybe it had already worn off by this point, too. I didn't want to do the usual red/orange lipstick because I felt like it made the black dress look too wintery. 

Wearing

Black Silk Dress with Beaded Flowers: Zara

Black Block Heels: Zara

Blue Mohair Coat: Zara

Oh and here is my awful attempt at showing what my nails were based on. We have a gem vault in the museum, and a few months back, I took a photo of the fluorite stone that we have. It's a blueish color with admittedly more of a silver than gold pyrite on it. But I painted my nails blue with gold to look like it. I tried? They looked better in person, it was hard to photograph them because the camera wanted to focus on both them and the gem in the background. 

Here's a photo of me and Greg that night. I wanted to get at least one photo with my favorite blue coat on the dress. I loved how they looked together. Thanks Greg, for taking all of those photos for me! And for helping me bag as much candy as possible. <3

Greg is Wearing

Purple Velvet Blazer: Asos

Tie and Tie Bar: Fred Perry

Shirt: Fred Perry

Pants: Levi's Commuter