Our PB&J Adventure Book

Our Very 1st Dapper Day

What took you so long?

Dapper Day, a day to step out in style at the Disney parks. It's an event that has been going on for years. It's a time for any Disney fans to break out their most fashionable attire and enjoy the parks in the most grand way. For details and a better history rundown of the event check it all out on the official Dapper Day page HERE.

From my own personal perspective, in all the time Dapper Day has been taking place, this was the first year, out of many, that we actually attended the fashionable day! So what took us so long to join in on the fun? When Dapper Day events first began happening at the parks I wasn't as big on the Disney fashion as I am now. Yes... there was a time when my life didn't revolve around the mouse and Disney style, shock I know! But as time went on and I started embracing my inner Disney fashion girl, and especially now with our family style.... my perspective started to change. I originally thought Dapper Day was intended for only the most notable of Disney fashionistas or only for those that were into retro/vintage/dapper style. All of which I wasn't really into at the time. Then, as the years passed I started to see more friends attend and realized that the day wasn't just for a particular niche of people. We started seeing regular families attend, your everyday park goers who took the event as their day to dabble into dapper waters for fun. Heck, we even saw some of our own family join in on the fun.  So when we learned of Spring Dapper Day, we decided to finally attend our first Dapper Day and see what all the hubbub was about!

Cars, but make it fashion

So with our first Dapper Day upon us the biggest question looming was "What are we going to wear?!". Since this was our first Dapper Day, the possibilities seemed endless, should I go full on princess mode? Should we try to go silly and be something unexpected? Then the lightbulb clicked and it was a style that we could all get behind: Pixar Cars!

PB has ALWAYS been the biggest car geek around, so Pixar's Cars is one of his Disney favorites. He doesn't show his excitement over too many things, but when it comes to cars and Disney's Carsland, he's all about it! His love for vehicles must have rubbed off on his son because Ben is currently OBSESSED with cars now, too! Take this kid into a parking lots and he'll just start exclaiming "Cars! Cars!". So after going through endless options on what to theme our first dapper should be, it dawned on me that we could get the best of all our worlds with a dapper Pixar Cars bound!

Cars Dapper Bound breakdown 

I can honestly say that I've never seen PB more excited for Disney style than he was with this Cars set! We decided that Ben would be our little Tow Mater since we could easily recycle clothing from his closet into the look. PB took on Lightning McQueen since it was the natural choice since his wife would be his Sally!

Side note, PB is the biggest Porsche geek around. No really, this guy is obsessed, so I wanted to do a Sally bound since she's a Porsche herself and I knew it'd (hopefully) make him smile a little bit if his wife was styled as the literal car of his dreams. LOL!

So how did this style come together? Here's how:

**I'll attach an Amazon link with our Dapper Cars Bound items HERE. (Amazon Affiliate link)

Tow Mater:

Materials:

- White button-down 

- brown or khaki shorts

- brown suspenders

- brown newsboy cap

- felt

- glue gun

- scissors

Ben already had a few of the pieces already in his closet, the shorts and button down were originally from Target and with the help of our favorite Amazon.com, I was able to find the perfect set of baby suspenders and a bowtie, along with shoes and his newsboy cap.

Everything is pretty self expalnatory with this look, the only DIY aspect is the hat, I attached two little felt rectangles to the brim of the hat to create the "Mater Teeth"

Lightning McQueen

Materials:

- Red button down tee

- black pants

- racing stripe/checkered flag suspenders

- yellow bow tie

Again, this look is pretty self explanatory. The only DIY aspect was a tiny felt "95" brooch I made for PB to wear on his suspenders. That was made out of yellow and orange felt and pinned on with a safety pin.

Sally

Materials:

- blue retro inspired dress

- Porsche patch or pin

- black pillbox hat
- glue gun

- black and grey felt

- polyfil stuffing

I found a simple blue retro inspired dress off of my favorite Amazon, along with a grey petticoat to wear under. With the addition of a simple Porsche emblem patch found off Etsy, the look was almost complete! The hardest part of my Sally style was my "tire" hat since I went a little extra on the details. You can easily just cut out tire shaped pieces and directly attach to the hat base. But me being me, I just had to go that "extra mile". I ended up gluing an set of felt on the hat base, stuffed it with polyfil for dimension, then glued it together to create a 3D tire effect.

The happiest place of style

With our style set, we ventured down to Disneyland for our first Dapper Day! Boy oh boy was it such an extraordinary day. We spent a good chunk of our time in Carsland since we just soaked in the the cars scene in our respective outfits. It was a total win for Ben since he loved just watching the Cars zoom by on Radiator Springs Racers. He even managed to get his dad to buy him a new Cars toy as a keepsake from our fun fueled day.

What was quite amazing was how the entire atmosphere of the parks was just surging with so much Dapper energy. Sure, you can get dressed up any day for the parks, but an entire day/weekend dedicated to retro fashion? Thats where the magic comes in. Just walking though the parks and being surrounded by so many fellow Dapper dressed guests made it feel like you were transported to a different time. It was truly wonderful to just see the crowds of people dressed in their best.

There was also a sense of so much style togetherness. I witnessed so may people complementing each other on their style, others were striking up conversations with people they just met and and bonding over the dapper magic. On our end, we had a magical day because so many of our friends were around at the same time. We were able to real life meet so many of our Instagram pals in one day!

This is why I felt like Dapper Day (and Disney in general) is so magical. It created such a sense of community all day long and it was perfect. I realized that I was completely wrong with my initial hesitations year before on attending this event. I had it in my mind that Dapper Day was just for the most retro/stylish Disney person, but in reality, it's a day for everyone! We saw families,  grandparents, couples, people of all ages, ethnicities and backgrounds all embracing their inner style! There were the most creative character bounds, styles based on colors, and just plain amazing fashion. Some were homemade, some were detailed DIY,  others were true vintage, some pieces off the rack... regardless of how the fashion came to be or who was wearing it, the end point is that it was all so beautiful!

When can we do this again?

I can now say that I'm 100% a fan of Dapper Day. You know we had a good time when PB said "I'd do this again, what are we going to be next?". Thats a win in my book. So thank you for a beautiful soiree, Dapper Day! Cant' wait for the next event!