When I decided to attend a local gala for "young professionals" this past weekend and drag my husband, Dustin, along with me, I gave very little thought to the "cocktail attire" dress code and what that meant in a city where the temperature dips into the 30s and 40s. I have spent most of my adult life in one of three places: San Diego, Jacksonville, Fla., and Pensacola, Fla. I have never in fact lived north of Virginia Beach, Va. My stash of cocktail attire, therefore, includes dresses with no sleeves, open-toe high-heels, and not one single shawl.

When I was getting dressed Saturday evening, I asked Dustin, "Do you think the no-pantyhose trend is a generational and universal thing, or is it a it's-too-hot-in-Florida-to-wear-pantyhose thing? Do you think women here in the North wear pantyhose?"

"You're asking me?" Dustin said, twisting up his face in confusion. His choices for the night were simple, and not one bit different than they were in Florida: coat, tie, pants.

I put on a sleeveless tiered chiffon dress with tiny beads (remember the beads; they are important later) at the hem, and froze my you-know-what off all the way to the civilian airport hangar, where the event was being held. That's when I saw other women in pants and sweaters.

"I think I need to go home and change," I told Dustin. But as a man who has worn the same suit to every single formal occasion for the last decade, my husband doesn't understand the feeling of being overdressed for a party. He nudged me forward, where a crowd was gathering. We didn't know a soul, and that's why we headed straight for the table with drinks.

Despite our loneliness, however, I have to admit that I felt "at home" in the greasy hangar with scuffed cement floors and the faint smell of JP-5 (jet fuel). The airport setting might have been a novelty to some party-goers, but for me, the location was the only thing that felt familiar. I've been a military dependent my entire life, so I've attended every kind of party -- birthdays, formals, homecomings, reunions, and holidays -- inside hangars where you have to watch your step around aircraft tie downs and signs, like the one near our table Saturday night, that read, “AVOID FOD: Foreign Object Danger.”

At some point during the night, we found ourselves near the only other two active-duty military personnel at the party: an Army colonel and a major. The presence of their uniforms, their tight haircuts, and their clipped manner of speech seemed even more familiar to me than perhaps the cavernous hangar.

"Go talk to them," I told Dustin. "I bet they'll be our friends."

But Dustin didn't move. There is a system for these things, and although I've been around the military since Day One, I don't always understand the rules.
"I can't just walk up to a colonel and say, 'hey, how you doin'?'" Dustin said.

So there we were trying to stay warm (much easier for Dustin in his cozy suit) and not look out of place. For the dinner, we found seats at a table on the outskirts of the room. Later, I snacked on stuffed pastries, bite-size cheesecakes and truffles.

"How's the dessert?" Dustin asked.

"Good, except the 'stuffed pastries' don't have any filling," I whispered.

A few minutes and several stuffed pastries later, I stood up to go to the restroom and found all the "lost" stuffing in my lap. Yes, I had to walk across the hangar floor, past a room full of people I don't know, in a dress that was too formal and cold and had a grapefruit-sized smudge of pastry filling on the front.

Oh, but it gets worse. When I got back to the table, I found a pile of shiny black beads in my seat and realized that my dress was unraveling at the hem. If anyone had needed to find me, they could follow the trail of beads from the bathroom, to the drink table, to the dessert cart and to my seat.

In the end, whether or not I wore pantyhose was the least of my concerns. After dessert, Dustin finally introduced himself to the Major and the Colonel. I noticed he was a little slow to claim me as his wife -- the one with pastry filling on her dress that was coming apart at the hem. Of course, this means that some things (besides Dustin's suit) never change — whether we are in California, Florida or Maine, Dustin ... well, he just can't take me anywhere.