Mermaids miss People's Choice Award but they'll be back
A GROUP of five family and friends who spent hours painstakingly crafting their mermaid outfits for Pub Fest were disappointed to miss the deadline for entering the costume contest.
Maryborough's Julie Muza said it took them longer than expected to get around the outer-area pubs and into the city centre so they missed the 2pm deadline to register at costume central.
But she said they'd be back next year to give it another go and couldn't wait to find out what the theme would be.
"Next year we will get dropped into town and start there first!" Julie said.
She said they had stayed up until 2-3am designing, fitting, sewing and decorating their costumes in the three days leading up to the event.
"We were still sewing stuff on the morning of pubfest," Julie said.
The group is made up of Julie's sister Kellie Fielding, Kellie's best friend Claudia De Cola, both from Sydney, Julie's oldest daughter Alex Maguire from Capella and Maryborough mate Melissa McAndrew.
"We all love dressing up, it is so much fun designing and creating our costumes for Pub Fest," Julie said.
She said the group had been planning the costumes for the past few months and sourcing materials from all over the place.
"Kellie and Claudia picked the material in Sydney and posted it up to me to start working on the basic costumes," Julie said.
She and Melissa sewed the skirts and their jellyfish bags and everyone decorated the bodices and shell bras.
Julie said Claudia, an art teacher and photographer, was the group's creative genius and did most of the hand decorating of the shell bras, hair clips and "made us some really cool seahorse rings".
Although the group didn't make it into the People's Choice contest this year, you can still for your favourite of those who did.
More than 1400 people have already voted and the poll will remain open until noon on Friday.
