My first Jane Austen Society event

When I decided to start the book club, it only seemed fitting that I also venture out and meet up with some other serious Jane-ites. So in December I somehow found a way to squeeeeze in a little morning out to celebrate Jane's birthday with some other ladies in my local JASNA chapter..

There was tea, an abundance of snacks, Jane-related gifts and even a few people dressed in regency attire.

I happen to have an empire-waisted maxi dress that my mom bought me that actually looked quite regency-esque in context.

This is the dress (I also wore it to a Cru vision dinner recently, so this is a photo, with a dear friend of mine, from that event).

For Jane's party I wore it with a long-sleeve white tee shirt under it.

We played a few games to honor Jane-- it was truly like a classy grown-up birthday party. The first was a guess-which-JA-character I am ice breaker. We each had a name tag with a quote by or about a character. I felt like I picked a pretty obvious one, can you guess who I was?  (I'll give the answer in the comments).

"Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied."

We also played a game of charades. Regency charades are actually word riddles; it's the modern game we play where we act words out silently. Some of these were quite tricky. Our group solved a few of them... naturally, when I quizzed David later, he was able to figure out all but one (he's a clever one). Are you in the book club? I'm going to share a few over there for fun.

Then we worked on "translating" a letter Jane wrote to one of her nieces- she wrote each word backwards, showing what a fun, playful aunt she was (something that I feel like Elizabeth Bennett would have done).

Other than one other younger girl who came with her mother, I was definitely the youngest one there. But I loved it! The ladies (actually there were also a couple of gentlemen there!) were all so sweet and welcoming, and they truly had a love for Jane. I really do think I'll be joining JASNA and returning again.

Have any of you Jane fans been to a JASNA event? Local friends, who wants to come with me next time?