Lover's Feast

Pictures can only even begin to explain what Lover's Feast is like!! For multiple weeks, the Madrigals practiced like crazy and prepared our script for the INCREDIBLE Lover's Feast! On the week of the show, we helped decorate the entire gym and even spent a late night together setting everything up, rehearsing, and having a pizza party together! Lover's Feast is on the weekend of Valentine's Day and it's an entire Renaissance enactment with stewards, guards, stockades, royalty, maypoles, ceremonies, and so many other Renaissance traditions! As a Madrigal, I was royalty and I got to eat at the head table and everyone below us were peasants! I was the daughter of the Lord and Lady of the Manor so I was even high royalty! The night starts off with the guests entering the garden through a drawbridge with the name of their house called out to everyone. All the wenches and stewards cheer if the guests are apart of their house. All the Madrigals, or royalty, are on the second level looking down on everyone! Before the feast begins, the flower girls sing and dance around the maypole while the Stewards sing about being men in tights. The jester then leads everyone into the feast and the guests find their assigned seats. The performance then proceeds the madrigals, the head steward, and the jesters presenting lines and improvising lines. The feast is an 8 course meal. In between the courses the madrigals would sing, the bell choir and recorder choir would perform, the jesters would put on some dance numbers, and people would be sent to the stockade! The first course was the salt ceremony where ladies would have to go up to the head steward and kiss him on the cheek in order to get salt for their table. The next course was bread and the head steward served the Lord of the Manor the "Upper Crust" of the bread. The next course was the Wassal (citric, cinnamon juice) that we would toast and cheer "Wassail" to! The next course was the salad that we had to eat with our fingers, then the soup, then the lemon ice, and then the main course with the turkey leg, rice, and green beans. Forks were banned so if anyone was seen with a fork, then they were brought to the stockade. The floor was covered in sawdust so once people finished their turkey legs, then we just threw them onto the floor! The final course was the pudding and that was my FAVORITE course! The entire night was so much fun! Up at the head table we passed along notes to each other with cheesy pick up lines. We had some of the stewards prank us at the head table and had a little fun messing around with each other! I truly grew a lot closer to my madrigal family and I know that I will never experience anything like Lover's Feast again! After we had our two performances, we took down EVERYTHING in one night in RECORD breaking time! We turned on some music and just had a blast taking everything down and transforming the cafeteria back to its original order! It was crazy how much the entire Feast changed the entire look and feeling of the cafeteria! It was absolutely magical!

Late night set up of Lover's Feast

My girls Alyssa, Rachel, Ali, and I at the entrance/draw bridge of the event!

My Madrigals!

The Maypole dance

The head royalty

The head table

Taylor was one of the servers at the feast and I was blessed to experience this with her!

The madrigals performing our numbers for the guests

Landon reading off he scroll of rules

Messing around at the head table

The stockade

WASSAIL!

The jesters!

The trivia game for the guests

Madrigal cast!