The Lights Festival

March of this year, I came across an ad for The Lights Festival which was highlighting the fact that they will be in my area. A few minutes later, I was on their website checking out how to purchase tickets and looking for what date the event was. Tickets were not yet available so I set a reminder on my phone to get tickets on the day that tickets became available for purchase.

When the day came to purchase and I could finally know the date of the event, I felt even more urgency to get tickets as the date of the event was three days before my mom’s birthday. Immediately, I knew that my lantern would be dedicated to her. I remember feeling so excited when I was able to snag two tickets at a relatively good price and quickly placed it on my calendar.

To say, that this event was unlike anything I had ever been a part of is an understatement. It was incredible. Sean is not one to be impressed by much and even I heard him whisper in awe, "wow, this is crazy" when all the lanterns lit up the black sky. It was the most amazing sight and we’ve both agreed that if it comes to our area next year, we’ll do it again. Sean’s mom and my mom’s birthday are two days apart so Sean’s lantern wished his mom a happy birthday and made a mention of her 3 years in remission.

Now a bit about the event. For our event, the gates opened at 4:30pm and they advised that they’d close the gates at 7:30pm. That was not the case. People were still being let in at 8:30pm. If I were to do it a little differently, we would have arrived much later (field is huge so you’ll be able to get a spot regardless of when you arrived) and would have brought some food/drinks to snack on. Although we knew that we could bring food we figured that we would get food from the food trucks because after all that is part of the fun. Well, the lines were super long and people were waiting for a very long time. So instead of getting food we got ice cream since the line for ice cream was shorter. I love ice cream and was not extremely hungry so it was no biggie to me but if you got there hungry ice cream would not have done the trick. So I’d recommend that you bring food and drinks. The reason we would get there later is because the lanterns can’t be lit until the sky is black and in the summer time that is basically around 9:15pm. We arrived around 5pm and although there was music (not that great if I’m to be honest) and dance games for kiddos to play … I just think that for us we got there too early. Although, I do believe that if you go with a bunch of friends that would make quite a difference as well and won't make the waiting seem as long.

But overall, it was such an incredible event and these pictures truly do it no justice. I wish I could show you the view as I saw it. I wish I could show you how I felt seeing all the lanterns light up the black sky. And I really wished that somehow my mom could see my message. What I do know is that if the Lights Festival comes back next year, I know what we'll be doing! OK, picture time!

This is what it looked like when we first arrived.
People just trickling in.





This was the "short" line to get ice cream.



Mint chocolate chip and cookie and cream for me! Delish!





People watching.
What can I say it's my favorite sport.





More people arriving.









I have to admit that when they started lighting up the torches I got so excited.





And now for the main event!