Royal Ascot

I have to admit, when my girls first mentioned that they wanted to go to Royal Ascot this year I was a little in two mind as to how much I would enjoy it, I loved the idea of dressing up but worried a little for the horses and also whether is would be  over crowded and a bit chavy , I couldn’t have been more wrong. In spite of my reservations Ascot was still on my bucket list and I am so glad it was and that I went as we honestly did have the most fabulous day from start to finish.

Here are some top tips on how we made it a cost effective and fab from start to finish:

1. We set up a WhatsApp group to manage the organising of the event – I’m a big fan of WhatApp, it’s free and everyone (pretty much) is on it and its great for organising group activities
2. We mixed up our groups of friends to create a larger group, this worked out really well as it meant that everyone knew at least one other person really well but also had quite a few lovely new faces to get to know. We even arranged a meal at a local restaurant with the whole group exactly one month before (in the previous pay cheque month) so that everyone could meet.
3. We shopped around for our outfits, just because it was Ascot didn’t mean it had to be designer, as ever the best tool ever! is Pinterest, get some inspiration of the type of look you want to go for and then keep your eyes peeled. When it comes to hats there is no shame in asking to borrow one from a friend, I posted a request on Facebook and had one of my friends offer me a whole bunch of hats to pick from which had literally just been gathering dust on top of her wardrobe, as hats so often do. But also, if you are going to buy think outside of the box, I ended up with an outfit which consisted of a £4, fancier than usual, beach hat from Primark and a simply black full length dress from the New Look Sale for £10. One of my other friends found an awesome occasional hat in a charity shop which then inspired her whole outfit. The main message here is keep open minded. Another tip for occasional wear, if you buy it cheap, do a spray tan or get your hair put up or make up done and you’ll instantly feel a million $, and the great thing about this is all of these treatments usually cost far less than an mid range expensive dress 🙂
4. My lovely friend Lil researched and concluded that the way to avoid  the trashy side of Ascot was to go mid week to miss the crowd, so we opted to go on the Tuesday and book the day off – If you have enough annual leave but you can’t afford to go abroad on holiday (my life for the past 5 yrs at least) taking the odd day off here and there and doing something lovely and out of the ordinary really does make you feel like you have had a mini holiday. Another good tip on a similar vein is, if you are going away for the weekend and you have limited annual leave, take a half day on the Friday afternoon and drive/ travel there ahead of time, even if you effectively just crash out Friday night, to wake up at your chosen destination on the Saturday, refreshed and so you have the whole day to play with makes the world of difference to feeling like you’ve had a “proper” holiday in my humble opinion.
5. Book tickets in advance through one person, get them to buy in bulk and everyone transfers the money straight to them. If you do this well ahead of time with group bookings it can be far less stressful than trying to all book individually and you quite often get a good (early booking) deal too
6. We booked a minibus to go down to Ascot and I would definitely say that was worth doing again. Again by booking in advance and through one person, similar to the tickets, it worked really well. We also arranged one pick up and drop off point, being Lil’s house. In order to relieve pressure and stress on the morning she actually told us we all needed to be at hers half an hour before we did, meaning that even those time-management-challenged amongst us (yes its a thing and yes I have the condition) were there in plenty of time before we needed to head off 🙂
7. We all took picnics and blankets. So many ways to do a cost effective picnic, this worked out just perfectly – we found a spot where we could lay the blankets out all together and just share our feast of picnicking delights.
8. Take your best camera and capture some fun photos, Lil even brought her tripod, ever organised as she is, we got some fab shots of the day which we will treasure forever – a few of which are below.
9. Finally agree, with yourself, a spending budget for the day and stick to it. I only took, £10-£20 to spend and I only bet very low on both ways but I came in lucky a couple of times, which was such a trill. My two treats of the day with my winnings, was a glass of Pimms (which I’m sure cost £7 or something ridiculous, but I expected it) and a 99 flake icecream and I was chuffed to bits with that.

It really was a fab day and something which I would do again in the future and highly recommend to others too. Hope my tips make your Ascot adventure as fabulous as ours.  🙂