God I love shopping. Tonight I attended the Nordstrom Grand Opening Gala with my friend Kimberly (there were lots of our Junior League of Honolulu friends there, too), and it was a blast. No expense was spared to make sure the evening ran smoothly. Everything was perfect. As I pulled into the valet parking and saw teams of valet guys running for the cars, people dressed in black and wearing puakenikeni lei at every corner, reps with headsets and radios conducting the scene, and a Hawaiian music serenade at the front entrance...What's this? A champagne greeting!.. I knew this was going to be fun.
Bars and buffet stations on every floor. Live entertainment. Waiters floating around with trays of amazing food. And incredibly sweet staff eager to help you with just about anything. They'll even walk you to the bar to get another drink.
The place was packed, but there was still enough room to browse at all the pretty merchandise. It really is a beautiful store and, as Kimberly said, "Will give Neiman's a run for their money."
After a couple of glasses of champagne and samples from two of the buffets, Kimberly and I head upstairs to the fashion show. Wow! We followed staff along long tented corridors to the main tent where the runway was set up outside.
The show was awesome. The clothes were beautiful...okay most of them...there were a couple of weird ones in there. They had a nice ethnic mix of models with quite a few asians in there, which made sense for a Hawaii market. But who knew that an asian woman could be so tall? I thought we maxed out at around 5 feet. Of course, I could starve myself for 3 years and still not fit into a single one of the outfits they wore, but boy were they nice to look at. And speaking of nice looking... the men modeling the men's clothing collection...
They were definitely a crowd pleaser.
After the fashion show we returned to the store for dessert and shopping. Two of our favorite things!!!! The desserts were both beautiful and delicious.
We finally decided we wanted to take a look at the kids department and found a sales rep up on the 3rd floor to ask for directions. Maria was just the sweetest salesperson ever and offered to walk us all the way down to the 1st floor to SHOW us where the kids department is. How cool is that?!? Even cooler... As we were about to board the escalator behind Mayor Mufi Hanneman and his wife, a handsome gentleman came up to Maria and gave her a big hug and got onto the escalator with us. As we rode down, Maria turned to introduce the man to us... Blake Nordstrom....4th generation family member and president of Nordstrom. It was a short ride down, but he was just the nicest guy...shook our hands, asked how we were doing, and thanked us for coming.
The kids department was great. Such cute clothes! Kimberly picked up several items. I'm proud to report I kept myself under control and only purchased ONE dress for Arwen. Adorable. I think she's going to wear it to Staci's birthday dinner tomorrow, so I'll share a picture of her wearing it later. We will definitely return after the store officially opens with the kids... they've got big screen tvs and Wii consoles in the dressing rooms!!!
It was hard for both of us to leave, but we had kids to pick up and put to bed. However, the evening ended with a lovely gift, a boxed set of cute Nordstrom note cards. 
