Black Tie Event!

Last night my husband and I were honored to attend a ball held to raise money for and to honor some undergraduate scholarship recipients. I was also able to meet the representative for the donor of my own graduate school fellowship which helps making attending school possible for me! I have been very excited and nervous about this event and one of the biggest concerns was that the event was black tie! Prior to this event the only place I have been to that required tux for the men was a wedding and still that was only for then men in the wedding party, a suite was just fine for everyone else. So I spent many hours contemplating my outfit of course and in true "Thrifty Jenny" Style doing it on a budget.

So if anyone else out there needs some black tie or formal dressing on a budget tips here is my rundown:

My Dress was 75% off!!! and came to $25 after tax!!! (on sale at Dillards!)- I found that even with this great sale if you choose tea length over full length you will save your self quite a bit of money.

I am wearing a shawl in this photo - it is still cold! (sorry the lighting is bad so it is had to see all the detail on the top of the dress since it is all black) the shawl was 50% off at $18 after tax!!!

The dress was very low cut and had quite a bit of cleavage showing. A the sales persons suggestion I looked for cami to under it since I really loved the dress. I looked and looked but found nothing that worked because I needed it to be cut strait across....until I remembered something I read on another blog (I am so sorry I can not remember where I read it) You can use your old belly band from pregnancy like a cami! I put it on like a tube top, put the dress on and it was PERFECT! $0

I had to buy some new pantyhose to go with the outfit and I wanted good quality so I used the JcPenny $10/$25 I posted a while back and bought 3 pair of pantyhose (they were on sale by 2 get one free.) plus I bought a pair of kids PJ's. The pantyhose came to $5 each after the coupon

My shoes too the most effort -6 hours total of shoe shopping- I hate shoe shopping! and they were the most expensive thing but you have to have shoes that fit well so they were from DSW and they were $44 after tax

I did have a cute little evening bag that I borrowed from my mom - $0

My husbands tux was paid for by a donor, but you can also save a little money on that too. Before we knew it would be paid we had set a price in mind when he went to pick it out they quoted him about $20 over that price and he just let them know what his price was they immediately said "ok" to his price. So there is wiggle room even there.

My total cost was: $92 (not bad for black tie!)