Consignment Sale at Mill City Ballroom

By Kevin Viratyosin

Finding shoes and clothes that work for ballroom is a struggle, and this is especially true for newbies who are still trying to figure out what makes ballroom dresses and pants different from regular clothes.

Members of the University of Minnesota Ballroom Dance Club competition team all try to help each other when it comes to getting ready for the first competition of the year: the guys go out vest shopping, and the gals have a dress-swap night, along with makeup demos. For folks in the club but not on the competition team, it’s often very difficult to find good dancewear, especially for cheap.

Luckily, this year Kate and Gordon Bratt hosted a consignment sale at Mill City Ballroom!

Here are some highlights:

• An abundance of shoes and dresses for ladies
• Shoes and vests for men
• Cool, danceable music in the background
• Kate and Gordon’s adorable children running around
• Erik Anderson taking pictures
• Sparkly dresses—so many sparkly dresses that ladies tried on and developed a bit of separation anxiety upon taking them off again

Overall, I would say the sale was a success! A lot of my teammates were able to find skirts, dresses, and shoes that fit, though some club members arrived at the sale a little too late, and everything had already gone. There were also quite a few other folks there who seemed quite happy with their purchases.

The pictures easily show how much fun we all had at the sale. Many thanks to Kate and Gordon for hosting! We hope you do it again!