When I asked intu if there was anything happening at the shopping centre, they mentioned the upcoming Ladies Night. Now, I’d often seen ads for these evening shopping events and had never been tempted, as I just assumed it would be just the usual shops open a bit later than usual. How wrong was I?!
It was on that rainy Wednesday this week – the most terrible heavy rain all day. My hair was a frizzy mess, I was half tempted to just go home. But I thought, no, why should we let the rain stop us, and I had already booked our free tickets. It certainly didn’t stop this bunch of women queueing!
There definitely was a sort of buzz in the air. I met my sister at Uxbridge station and we walked over at about 7.15pm. By then the queue had moved inside – phew! We waited alongside the other ladies for about 5 minutes, where we could see a flurry of ‘butlers in the buff’ getting goody bags together. We were let in one by one, getting our tickets checked and our hands stamped. Then we got handed a goody bag by a butler with no top on and a bow tie. My sister did not know where to look!
Then the excitement started. We saw lots of stores were open late, and lot of stands with different activities. The first stand were giving out free glasses of Pimms and Lemonade for signing up to the Liquid mailing list (that’s the local nightclub in Uxbridge) and an exclusive Ladies keytag that gave 50% of entry. So a good thing if I ever want to relive my youth!
Further up was a stand with a lady making chocolate fondue skewers! Nothing to sign up for here, we just got to choose what we wanted on the skewer. We choose a strawberry and profiterole – yum! Downstairs we could see there was more things happening. We sat outside Debenhams to eat our skewers, where a lady offered us a beauty loyalty card for eyebrow threading – buy 5 sessions, you get the 6th free. We politely declined – ouch!
Downstairs there was a cocktail bar with bartenders showing their tricks and serving free glasses of Cosmos and Mojitos, and there was a table with glasses of free proscecco plus a karaoke booth! I dragged my sister in! She’s a bit alternative and I didn’t want to choose my usual 90s rnb songs, so in my panic, I chose Linkin Park – What I’ve Done. Yes really, what had I done, it’s a really low song. Still that was a laugh and we got a photo printed out for free as a keepsake, we they also uploaded to Facebook for us.
After that we had a browse through the shops. All the women’s shops were open – River Island, New Look, H&M, Dorothy Perkins, Debenhams, Next, Gap, Swarovski, Boots, USC, Topshop and more. Still I didn’t see any clothes I like, and ended up buying a shower gel from Boots. I know, not very glam, but I needed one after Tyler tipped my whole bottle in the bath the night before!
We also saw ladies getting hair makeovers, and there was a selfie stand with props. We got handed a Beauty4You goody bag too. Apparently Calum Best was in Waterstone, but we didn’t see him. All in all, it was a really enjoyable night. There’s a really different atmosphere shopping at night with just us ladies there, like we had the place to ourselves and we were made to feel very special. Plus the amount of freebies! Here’s what was in our goody bags – bath salts, a mirror, pen, sweets, vouchers and a calendar. If you see an evening event coming up at your local intu shopping centre, book a ticket! It is so worth it!
Sabrina xx
