Get a hat

Often, at these classes, I'll get a group of girls who are initially a bit wary.  They walk into the room looking startled and a bit suspicious - peering round the door and even seeming to be irritated and almost hostile.  There's nervous laughter and shocked noises.  And these responses are coming from girls who already know what's going on.

That's how this class started.  It took a while to coax the girls in, and I had to be quiet because the bride was blindfolded and was the only one of them who had no clue what to expect.  Eventually, she was led in by the hand.

I improvised at that point and took her other other hand, then led her into the middle of the room.  That was the point where - at hear expense - some of the other girls seemed to relax into the whole thing.  Loads of pictures were taken of the bride and I - her blindfolded and me standing naked next to her.

I was wearing a hat - a new prop I'd recently got hold of - and before the bride took off her blindfold, I took the hat off and held it over my crotch.  And kept it there for the next ten minutes or so - even conducting the entire first pose with it.  It got discarded and forgotten shortly after that, though.

I liked using the hat.  It felt awkward and strange - a bit contrived - to be continually holding it in position like that at first, but then I realised that the contrivance was what was making it fun.  It only felt unnatural to me, because I wasn't used to going to such lengths to preserve a bit of modesty.

The event went well.  There was the slow start, but it was a large group and I think a few of the girls didn't know each other, yet.  Often the large groups require a bit more effort, but in this case, it was well worth it.  By the end of the event, the girls were completely into it and really seemed to be enjoying themselves.  A couple of the girls that I had thought were a bit shy and reserved initially, were actually pretty eager to pose for photographs with me and I was continually being invited to get into the middle of one group or another.

At one point, I was posing with the bride.  I made a joke to her about her husband coming after me once he'd seen the pictures, but someone else said that this class was his idea.  That's something I like to hear about - a couple being at ease with this sort of thing, rather than threatened by it.

When it was all done, I went to the reception desk to pay for the room rental.  While I was there, the two girls at the reception became curious about the nature of the class, so I described it to them.  I showed them the blog website on my laptop, then wrote the address of it down on the back of one of my old art business cards.  One of those girls might be going to a hen night in February, and she seemed to be keen on pitching this to her friends as a potential adventure.  The really cool thing was that the girls I had just modelled for were in the hotel bar, so by the time I left, she was planning on getting some feedback from them.  If they were still as enthusiastic, then I can only imagine that they'd have done a far better job of selling the classes than I ever could.