I finally had the opportunity to go to one of the legendary Alison Show dance parties and it lived up to the hype, you guys. Me and my best friend Eliesa had standing plans to go to “the next one,” for basically the past year but they have never worked out with our schedules or pregnancies. I wasn’t planning on going to this one, as she was in Oregon with a brand new perfect little preemie baby, but when another friend texted me Tuesday night with tickets I knew I couldn’t say no!

I had a lot of questions on snapchat and twitter and instagram about it, so here’s your cliff notes. Alison is a Provo personality, blogger, designer, event planner, and mom. Her blog/site The Alison Show is all about being awesome, throwing amazing parties, and just living a colorful, fun life. For the past couple of years she’s thrown these huge all-girl grown up dance parties every few months, with elaborate themes, sponsors, photo props, swag bags, killer DJs, and costumed servants.

I tried to explain it to The Beard several times, but he still just thought it was weird AF. In his defense, it’s a little weird for a 26 year old mom to dress up like a mermaid on a Wednesday night to go to a dance party. I get it.

So finally teacher Danica kicked in to put it in terms he could understand. “Imagine a cool baseball player you knew was hosting a legit 9 on 9 baseball game in the Owlz stadium. You get a jersey and they call your name and give you gatorade and orange slices and Big League Chew and you could take a picture for your own baseball card. Would you pay $50 for that?”

“Oh. Oh yeah of course I would!” – that’s censored from what he actually said, but the answer was an enthusiastic affirmative. He was much more understanding after that. I will say I am so grateful for a husband that lets (wrong word but you get my gist) me do crazy things like this, on a whim, last minute, leaving him to fend for himself and Reese for 8 hours.

I spent Tuesday night in frantic texts with my girls planning our outfits, hair, makeup, pre-party dinner plans, carpool, and just getting so hyped. Melissa – who got our tickets last minute – also made us coordinating mermaid and Mean Girls themed shirts. With less than 24 hours warning! What a pro.

On a whim I decided to make some seashell hair clips, which is ambitious for me. I suck at crafts. But this was surprisingly easy! I bought a little woven bowl of small seashells in the craft section and a packet of plain barrette clips and just went HAM with my hot glue gun. I made all 10, giving them to all the girls in my dance posse, which was so fun and a huge win for me, TBH.

The party was amazing. The girl power you feel at something like this is just so rad. Everyone is so nice and complimenting each other and dancing together… it’s incredible. There’s the main stage, raised platforms throughout the dance floor, various photo stations, and the sponsored food/drink booths around the dance floor. Jumping up on the stage with my girlfriends to dance and sing “Shake It Off” with Alison and her sharks (lol) was the highlight of my night.

Sodalicious sponsors basically all of her events, which of course they do. She also had Vida Acai bowls aka “Mermaid Soup” and Lick’d Gourmet Popsicles which were SO GOOD. Lularoe was their headline sponsor. We got cute swag bags with shell leggings from them, delicious toffee, clam shaped macarons, cute Alison Show postcards, and more.

I highly recommend these parties. I’m gonna make it a priority to try to attend as many as she throws as I can. It’s secretly one of my dreams to throw a party like this one day. Sometimes you just gotta shake it like you don’t have a toddler at home spilling a whole container of rice, ya know? HMU if you want to come to the next one with me!!