TW: WaPo puts together a piece on how inaugural festivities have evolved over the years from elegant to out of control. I have a feeling this year's edition will be challenging but those there will never forget it I am sure.
From WaPo:
"At the 1893 inaugural ball of Stephen Grover Cleveland, heralded as "a triumph of the electricians' skill" at the time, a canopy constructed of 10,000 square yards of gold bunting hung over a jubilant display of silk, flowers and incandescent light bulbs, which spelled out the names of all previous presidents in gargantuan twinkly letters. A 120-piece orchestra led by John Philip Sousa played for the guests, who could pause from dancing to nibble on 60,000 oysters, 10,000 chicken croquettes, 150 gallons of lobster salad and 1,300 quarts of ice cream, among other things.
For male attendees who arrived feeling disheveled, a team of 10 barbers stood at the ready to provide on-site cuts and shaves.
At the 1997 inaugural balls of William Jefferson Clinton, guests at certain venues could purchase a plastic box containing a ham and Swiss mini-biscuit for $5.50 and, for an extra $4, a glass of wine dispensed from an 18-liter box. Naturally, that wasn't true of every venue. Some places went the peanuts 'n' frozen cookies route. At the Tennessee ball in Union Station, one resourceful guest brought along her own box of Cheez-Its...
...The whole thing started to go all wrong, prospective ballgoer, in the '50s, that decade of Kinsey, Elvis and Ike. It wasn't his fault; he and Mamie loved to dance...
...When Dwight D. Eisenhower entered office in 1953, Democrats had been in the White House for two full decades, and Republicans were rarin' for a good bash.
And how. An official ball was planned and the Inaugural Committee sent out thousands of invitations to supporters -- way more than the D.C. Armory, the planned venue, could accommodate. By the time Inauguration Day rolled around, more than 90 percent of those invited had responded affirmatively, so the committee had decided to split the ball between two jampacked locations: the Armory and a Georgetown gymnasium. On the morning of the event, some 2,000 come-latelies rushed the ticket booth to learn which venue they had been assigned to, and in the process missed something important: the soon-to-be-sworn-in Eisenhower, passing by the booth on his way to the Capitol...
...Technology added another layer of frenzy to the Kennedy festivities: Those inaugural balls were televised, meaning that people around the country saw the first family in all its glamour and began, in later years, to angle for tickets like never before."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/02/AR2009010200637.html
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