Happy Wednesday, Partiers! Did everyone have a good long weekend? We here at Ugly Christmas Party spent our Labor Day actually working. Well - "working." Mimosas were passed, fun was had, so I can't say it was your standard work day. On Monday, we gathered some of our nearest and dearest and threw our first ever Ugly Labor Day Party. 

But let's backtrack for a minute. This all started a couple of months ago, when I wanted to redo this very website you're visiting right now. I played around with the theme, but quickly realized our pictures were out of date, and didn't accurately reflect the scope of what we have to offer. Our best sellers weren't even included, let alone all of our new styles. We needed a full on photo shoot.

Tyler and I talked about renting a studio and hiring some models, but then we realized that was never going to give us the feeling that we're going for. Ugly Christmas Party is about spending the holidays with your friends, family, and a bunch of ugly sweaters. We could try to recreate that environment with strangers who only met five minutes ago, or we could just throw an actual party and snap pictures of our actual friends and family having an actual good time. 

So we put out the invite, with promises of booze and pizza in exchange for their time and smiling faces. We were nervous no one was going to be interested - did people want to dress up in sweaters and pretend to celebrate Christmas on what is traditionally the last pool party day of the year? Spoiler alert: they did. 

My sisters were both in town visiting me, so the day before the party, we blasted some Christmas music, dug out my holiday decor (shout out to Michael's and their Black Friday 50% off sale last year!), and got to work bringing Labor Day weekend straight into December. 

The party started at 2pm the next day, and Tyler and I started to get very nervous when, at 2:30pm, only two people had shown up. But by 3:15, the house was getting full, the keg was flowing, and we were ready to start. Everyone got really into it, and I think you can feel the fun we were having through the pictures - all 1,143 that were taken. I can't wait to share them with you all, but there's a lot of photo editing in my future, so here are just a couple of sneak peaks in the meantime. 

I want to end this post by sending my sincere thanks to everyone who made this party/photo shoot happen: my mother-in-law Karen, for donating her tree, decorations, and beautiful handmade stockings, and watching Theo throughout the party; my sisters Caitlin and Rose for spending half of their visit to California hanging ornaments and jamming along to Christmas carols; Dominos and Albertsons for "catering" our event; and all of our friends and friends-of-friends who spent their day off modeling our sweaters and posing underneath huge lights while it was 99* outside. Ugly Christmas Party is a family business, and our family really helped us out this weekend. We love you all and cannot thank you enough!

So that's a wrap on the First Annual Ugly Labor Day Party! We'll see you again next year. 

Have yourself a very Ugly Christmas,

Sarah