Cattle Baron's Ball 2012

I think most of you know that charity events are a BIG deal in Dallas. There seems to be a big one every other weekend. While everything benefits a worthy cause, like anything in life, some events are more popular than others. Cattle Baron's Ball is one of these. They always get a big country star to come in and preform for the evening and have an amazing silent auction and an endless buffet (with breakfast late in the evening). CBB is one of those things I always thought would be fun to go to, but have never had the chance to purchase a ticket. So, I was absolutely thrilled when I won two tickets from CultureMapDallas for this year's ball!

CultureMapDallas is a great new resource for anything and everything happening, changing  or news worthy in my city. There are also editions for Austin as well as Houston and hopefully they will continue to expand to other cities around the country. 

 

It rained and POURED harder than it had any other day this year on the Saturday of CBB. However, I was not about to let that stop us from going and having a wonderful evening! Thankfully, the CBB committee felt the same way and the show went on with a new rain plan (no cars parking in fields and getting stuck as they had in the past). The rain did not let up the entire evening; even Blake Shelton's band had to bail it was that bad. I am starting to think Dallas has bad luck weatherwise on big nights...the Super Bowl was a mess too!

I think one of the fun aspects of CBB is that even though it is a huge gala and biggest single night cancer fundraiser in the world, it is still super casual. Everyone wore boots and about half the guests were in jeans. I did spy a handful of Texas tuxes, but that was about as fancy as it got.

 The food was all home cooking with many Texas favorites. Eddie Dean's always knows the way to a TX foodie's heart!

 Our favorite station of the evening was of course one of the sweets stations. I had four s'mores total and each was better than the last. They had all types of chocolate, but my favorite was the Cookies and Cream. It was beyond amazing with that warm marshmallow!

 While the live auction had all the big ticket items (one of the most popular were two tickets to the Victoria's Secret show) the silent auction was filled with treasures too. They had everything from a week rental in East Hampton to a year of DryBar to Celebrity Bakery everyday for a year to this amazing Union Jack sofa. 

 We did not win anything, but we did make out with a fun photo booth photo. I am the WORST when it comes to doing funny poses on the spot so this was as good as we got.

After Blake Shelton finished his acoustic concert (remember his band could not play back up due to the rain?) it was back to Dallas in the storm. All in all it was such a fun night even if it was wet and muddy and made the weather a perfect storm!