Greetings from lovely rainy Parsippany NJ where my sister and I are stationed for the weekend to bring you all the news that’s fit to print from The Official Twilight Convention (formerly known as TwiTour) presented by Creation Entertainment!   Our mission (which we’ve whole heartedly accepted of course) is to bring you all the exciting details from this very special event and as many clear, crisp professional photos as we can take! 

In this report: getting here, getting settled and getting our Twilight groove on!

We started this adventure by leaving the Baltimore MD area at 11pm following my day of business travel, arriving around 3am (we are nothing if not dedicated).  Our excitement kept us awake for the drive. . .and then we saw the comfy Hilton beds and crashed for a few hours.  Rising at 8:30am, we put on our game faces and headed down to pick up our Gold Package tickets and get the day underway!  First up. . .registration.   That’s my sis posing after our check in, and me with our select pics of Kellan and Peter (since they weren’t able to make it due to Eclipse filming.  . .ok, we forgive them!).

Because Kellan, Ashley, and Jackson also weren’t coming, we were able to trade in our photo op tix (above) for $$ to use at the Convention merchandise tables (see TM’s MTV post tweeted from earlier today).  So far its enabled us to each buy hoodies, tshirts for the kids (Alice & Rosalie are the faves) and some still photos for my niece.

Surrounded by all kinds of directional signs, we head into the main convention area, do our shopping (see note above) and meeting Kimbra Hickey, the hand model from the Twilight book cover.  We didn’t pay for the picture of her, but did pay for her autograph on a cool book mark and postcard (that also has Rob’s and Stephenie’s autographs on it!).  Kimbra was so charming and easy to talk with and said she’s keeping so busy with all the convention touring, its pretty much her full time gig now.  Another successful business born from Twilight!

Making our way into the main ballroom (or meat locker, it was so cold in there!), we see the cool stage set up and these tall banners you see on the corners of the screens are being autographed by each celebrity then will be auctioned off at Sunday’s charity breakfast.  You’ll see Catherine and Gil’s signatures in a couple of the pics.  And those were our seats – Row I, seats 19 and 20, right on the middle aisle, great view!

 Our hosts for the event were the gang from The Hillywood Show – such a cool group of talented people!  I have to admit I hadn’t seen any of their Twilight spoofs, but we were treated to a showing and it was HILARIOUS!  They also introduced each segment of the day with lines and acting straight from Twilight with their own funny twists, which kept everyone laughing.  They are working on the New Moon spoof now and hope to release it in January 2010.

After lunch at the hotel (and the only thing “Twilight” about this menu was the cover!), we basked in the glory of time with Catherine and Gil – which I’m saving for Part 2 of the news.  So in between those we were treated to time with the ladies from the original major online Twilight presence – Twilight Lexicon!  Lori and Jen (a.k.a. Alphie and Be My Escape) shared awesome stories of the start of the Lexicon, their time on the Twilight set, and outtakes from the red carpet premiere, with Laura (a.k.a. Pel) as media queen behind the scenes.  They were so great – and the clips from interviews of Taylor and Kristen filming the “day from hell” at La Push beach were priceless.  Taylor is oh so cute – in a boyish way, vs. his new manly presence, and Kristen was really open and gracious talking about Bella.  In the video, the wind was howling and the rain coming down sideways just like Catherine said – you could imagine the teeth chattering in the cold!  Jen dished on her red carpet experience and the feeling (maybe I’d call it being dazzled?) of interviewing Kellan standing inches from her!  I had the pleasure of meeting them a little later as I approached with an impromtu introduction and a thank you for their inspiration to the start of the Twilight online presence.  So cool!

Photo ops with Catherine and Gil were just amazing – seriously, they are both so down to earth and adore the fans.  More on that in post 2!  The trivia contests were fun to watch and try to guess answers from the audience (tomorrow we are all over the contests to win some serious prizes), and I was even interviewed by a reporter from The Daily Record while we watched the games – AWESOME!  Even people watching was well worth being in a freezing hotel ballroom all day!  Our day ended with autograph sessions with Catherine and Gil – unfortunately Gil’s “handler” would only allow him to sign one thing but Catherine was so gracious, giving a resounding yes to signing both my Director’s Handbook and DVD cover (same for my sis). 

We ended the day with dinner (of course I had mushroom ravioli) and dragging on our feet, decided to skip the concert featuring Gil and the band, The Twilighters, but I’ll be interviewing my Facebook Twilight Moms buddy, Nancy, tomorrow for details to report to you.  Be on the lookout for post 2 on Catherine and Gil. . .and stay tuned tomorrow night for my report on Day 2 featuring the high temperatured (and hot bodied) Wolf Pack (Chaske, Alex & Kyowa) and New Moon’s villain accomplice, Laurent (Edi Gathegi). 

This is Cullenized reporting from NJ – sweet dreams!