Casa Bella’s wigs, laughter, trophies and murder

And so here we are, 2 days later (sounds like a film title doesn’t it).

The balloons have been deflated, the posters taken down, the jewels stolen and Casa Bella’s dining room returned to its usual state in anticipation of tomorrow’s formal business meeting. Casa Bella’s first Murder Mystery is over so what was it like?

When somebody asks me that question my first answer is BIG! Big anticipation, big fun, big outfits, big wigs, big laughs and big boobs! Oh, and some murder. Yes, this event, more than its predecessors, had all of the perfect ingredients for a fantastic evening and has got to be right up there with one of the best ever, but it wasn’t without its challenges.

Casa Bella’s Murder Mystery has been months in the planning, and by months, I don’t just mean the usual 3 months to plan the evening, prepare guest packs, plan the theme, source the props and design a menu but it’d already been postponed by an additional 2 months to make way for Casa Bella’s Devil’s Dinner Party. So you can imagine my horror when on the Tuesday before the Saturday event the main character (and victim for the evening) called to tell me that he could not attend as he had other plans hundreds of miles across the world and they clashed.

Now, normally, I’d just ‘adapt and overcome’ however, on this occasion, it wasn’t that easy because I couldn’t see an easy way of finding somebody in days who was willing to play the compulsory character and, um, die! At first, my lovely niece came up with the concept of dressing as a man. I actually considered the suggestion for a while but when I thought about it, I just couldn’t. The character is based on Pamela Anderson’s ex, rocker hubby Tommy Lee.  Now, if anybody has seen that man, you’ll know that a pretty 17 year old girl with a drawn on moustache, and a wig (that looked like a prop from the Psycho film set) simply wasn’t going to cut the mustard.  No, there was only one thing for it; I’d have to cancel the event.

It was Wednesday and I was just trying to work out how I was going to deliver the news to the guests, many of which, I knew were really looking forward to it. But then my sister and I came up with a somewhat radical idea. Why not hire an actor?  Okay, so maybe that would have been a tad OTT but we had the next best thing. I’d already rehired one of the butlers from Casa Bella’s Devil’s Dinner party whom we all liked very much, and I knew Lee was the kind of guy who would turn his hand to most things if he could, so I made contact, gave him a the brief and warned him that he’d have to fly a bit by the seat of his pants and, well, follow my lead as we’d have to pretty much make some of it up as we went along.  Lee’s answer, ‘be happy to help if he could’. We were back in business!

So, I deleted the guest message that I’d already started to draft and instead turned my fingers to a full evening’s brief for the man who was not only going to be our butler for the evening but was also going to mingle as a dinner companion, a character and a victim!

And so, disaster averted, the show really went on.  Saturday came and although still somewhat disappointed that my best friend was unable to make the event, I donned my costume (third time lucky, the first two did not fit!) and transformed myself into JonVolta who was clearly modelled on the famous John Travolta although, with wig, I ended up looking more like Elvis (in his worse and plumpier years).

Some of the room decorations didn’t quite go to plan. E.g. the fact that I wanted to line up popcorn bags along the windows (with lights in them) for that ‘screen’ feel but the miserable gits at Cineworld told me that they wouldn’t give nor sell the empty bags to me as they were part ‘of stock’.  They did, however, very kindly give me permission to buy the bags for £3 something each as long as they were filled with popcorn!   Needless to say, I politely declined; if I wanted to surround myself with bags of stale popcorn, I would have visited them sooner. It was too late to buy the bags I wanted online so we ended up instead with a mad dash to the local store for bags of another well known brand instead. Also, the self-illuminating balloons I bought along with a canister of helium decided not to play ball either; the balloons kept on descending back to earth too soon! Online reviews confirmed this was a common defect so, in the end, I had to leave inflating the balloons to the last possible moment, and they just about made it to dinner before kamikazeing themselves onto the dining table and surrounding area.

So,  19:30 arrived as did all of our guests, wearing some hilarious costumes and some wonderful smiles. None knew what to expect from a murder mystery but they all dove into the spirit of the evening, and whilst all of the Casa Bella events have been fun, I don’t think any have been as hilarious, especially when I announced the SKITS.