Coral Gables Signing – September 15th, 2007

Hey everyone!

I’m so sorry it took me a week to get this post up, but it’s been a crazy week for me. But better late than never, right?

I couldn’t possibly miss a visit by Stephenie to my home state, so I drove 500 miles to attend the Coral Gables (I know. Crazy, right?). I had planned on being there by 2:00 or 2:30, but that didn’t happen. Instead, my mom, my little sister and I arrived at 3:15 to find the War Memorial already filled with anxious Twilight fans.

We managed to get very close to the doors to the gym (mainly because we didn’t know a line was forming out the side door and around the corner of the building) and we bought our books so we could get into the signing. While we were waiting for the even to actually start I wandered around taking pictures of the line and some cool t-shirts I saw. I even ran into a lexicon member, Cami1219 (she was part of the very first group I asked to take a picture of and she recognized me instantly! I just wish she had told me who she was, but you can see a picture of us here).

Once the doors opened (around 3:40) we began to file into the gym to wait for the Q&A. I took a few pictures of the quickly growing crowd before I noticed Stephenie’s publicist walk out of a side door and start striding through the crowd, looking around for something. I yelled across the room and she finally found me. So, if you noticed three people push through the line and walk into the double doors at the front of the room with a lady in a red shirt, that was me and my family. We got to talk to Stephenie and Elizabeth for about five minutes. She signed our books and I gave them the presents I’d brought for them. Poor things were absolutely exhausted! We gave them hugs and were ushered out a side door so that Stephenie could walk out into the crowd and begin the Q&A.

Stephenie opened the Q&A by answering the questions that she has gotten on almost every stop of her tour, just to save time and then she answered more questions. I couldn’t video her responses because I don’t have a camera that takes good video, but from what I could hear, there weren’t any new questions asked. If anyone has a transcript of her questions or a video of the event, PM me a link and I’ll add it to this post.

Once the Q&A was done (4:30 PM), she began signing books. I stayed at the front of the line on some bleachers and took pictures of cool shirts/costumes/dresses that caught my eye. If you were there and you don’t see yourself in the pictures I either didn’t see you or my battery was dying. I tried to get everyone, but I’m sure I missed a few. The actual signing of books took the rest of the evening. I’m positive that she signed almost 3,000 books that day; I didn’t see anyone with only ONE book in their hands and I would bet that there were close to 1,000 people there. As soon as the last book was signed, Stephenie was ushered out of the gym. We left soon after and such is the end of my tale.

You can view the slideshow here.

If anyone has pictures that I didn’t get, send them my way! 🙂

Seraphyn

I have received links to two photobucket albums with more pictures of the signing! Check them out!
ILL_JILL’s pictures can be found here.
floppery’s pictures can be found here.