A few weeks ago my 5yr old tried out her first pagent. If you’re looking for a pagent, National American Miss (NAM) really wasn’t bad. Everything starts and ends on time – and since I love schedules, this was awesome! Everyone’s polite, the kids are nice, etc. I had read up on some reviews before deciding to actually do this, so I wasn’t expecting “Toddlers and Tiaras”. Overall, the pagent is run professionally.
Most importantly, my 5yr old had fun. She’s already talking about going again next year.
Here’s the thing, it’s about $500 just to enter the pagent, plus you have your hotel and food on top of that. However, if you actually want at chance at winning the pagent, you have to enter all the “extra” activities, so the total pagent cost is closer to $1,000 just to enter. The winner does get a modeling contract, so this kind of makes sense. They say all over the place that the extra activities are not required to win, but really, there wasn’t a single girl up there in the “queen’s court” who hadn’t done every single extra activity. So, if you’re going to go, you kinda have to do it all.
Then, you add outfits on top of all this, and things start really getting expensive! They do do a professional photo shoot in the girl’s formal gowns, which is really nice (of course that’s extra).
It was a little tough having the younger kids along – really just the 1yr old was tough, the 3yr old would have had way more fun if I wasn’t keeping up with the 1yr old the whole time. If we do it again I may have to figure something else out for the little kids.
My opinion, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought, I’m glad my 5yr old enjoyed it, I’m not sure if we’re doing it again, I’m going to have to think some more about that. The thing is, if you want to win, you really do have to focus some more on modeling and acting and I have to decide if that’s a route we’re willing to let our girls pursue.