As A-Kon grew closer, everyone started preparing--either reserving two rooms at the Sheraton for all of us (and our chaperone, Ashley's mom) to stay in or finishing the costumes they were planning to wear. 
As for me, the week before A-Kon was spent sewing my costume, Presea from Magic Knight Rayearth. I had chosen Presea primarily because she's blonde (I didn't want to dye my hair or wear a wig), but also because at the time, Magic Knight Rayearth was one of my favorite series. I liked Presea and her outfit and thought it would be fun to make, so I decided to do it. Well, not really me--I can't sew. 
The actual sewing was up to my poor mom, who was really nice about helping me with the costume. (Especially since my sister Bekah was also going, and cosplaying as Sailor Chibimoon from Sailormoon!) As you can see from the pictures, Presea's outfit consists of an orange-red turtleneck shirt, a tannish-brown apron thing that covers the front and back and ties at the sides, orange-red things that cover her legs, and other armor-y bits for her shoulders, knees, etc. Being that this was my first official cosplay project, most of the extra things were left off, and a lot of things were 'modified' in the costume-making process (for example, I thought it was going to be too hot for a long-sleeved turtleneck so I cut off the sleeves.. a really bad idea but it's too late now). The end result was a not-very-accurate-or-recognizable Presea costume, but I think it's good for my first try. I can't say I'll ever wear it again, though.. at least without a lot of major modifications.
Friday
The first day of the con! I arrived at the lobby of the Sheraton around 1:00 to meet Ashley. There we waited for Amy and J.J. (a girl from our school) to get there, and Ashley handed us our badges (she'd registered us all earlier). Looking around the lobby (which wasn't very full at the time, being the smaller hotel of the two A-Kon was held in that year), I remember being awed a all the people in costumes just walking around in a hotel. (At the time, I wasn't wearing my costume, although Ashley, Amy, and J.J. were.) Although my sister Bekah, Ashley's cousin Stephanie, and their friend Monica were also there, the rest of my friends weren't getting there until later, so we went up to our hotel rooms, which were on the second floor. We had to listen to Ashley's dad give us a lecture on safety, etc (T_T) before we could start exploring. That year A-Kon was being held in two hotels (because the previous hotel had backed out at the last minute, I think) and the second hotel, the Westin, was only a short walk away. (Being my first con, this led me to believe that all conventions were held in two hotels. ^_^;;) The hotel we were staying at, the Sheraton, was only housing a few panels and video rooms, while the Westin across the street was home to most of the panels and the dealer's room. Finding nothing to do in our hotel, we walked across the small field and crossed the minor street to reach the Westin.
Walking inside, I was immediately impressed. I don't think I'd ever been in a hotel as fancy as that before A-Kon, so I was amazed by the quality of the lobby alone—marble floors, a set of escalators, a clear elevator, and big windows and mirrors everywhere. It was certainly a sharp contrast to the brown couches of the Sheraton, especially when you considered how relatively low-key that was compared with this one--the Westin was FULL of people. There were dozens of groups of people sitting all over the lobby, talking, posing for pictures, everything. That still remains as one of my coolest con memories--walking into the Westin and seeing the people EVERYWHERE.
Anyway, we made our way across the room and took the escalators up to the second floor, which is where all the things like the dealer's room were. Dealer's room--big impression #2 of the day. As soon as we walked in, I was in awe once again. First off, the room it was in was HUGE.. it's still the biggest dealer's room I've ever seen. Then there was the fact that I'd never seen so much anime in one place in my life!! It was the most awsome thing ever, and I immediately spent 15 minutes walking around just taking everything in. They must have had everything that I had never seen before and didn't even know you could get at an anime con--wall scrolls, posters, figures, CDs, videos, pocky, even knives. Here's what I ended up buying:
Chocolate pocky (with free anime tissues!)
Sailormoon SuperS movie (My sister got the R movie)
Cardcaptor Sakura holographic trading cards
Sakura keychain (She's in her third opening dress, it's so pretty)
Strawberry pocky
CCS trading cards (I like them better than the holo ones)
Laminated Quatre card (Awwww!! He's playing with a puppy and he looks so cute)
Sakura plushie (Second opening dress! It's cute)
Asuka from Evangelion plushie (She's in her plug suit.. Asuka is so cool!)
After walking around the Westin some more, we went back to our hotel to sit in the lobby and wait for Eryn (who was getting there that night). In the lobby, me and Ashley had fun laughing at these two guys on the couch who were getting a little too close to each other while they read a comic book.. XDD we were evil. Yep, that's them in the picture.. *giggles*
So then Eryn got there, J.J. went home, and we went up to our hotel room for the night. (I had kinda wanted to go to karaoke, but we decided it was too late and didn't go.) It was like a big sleepover that night.. we stayed up until around 2 a.m. drawing stuff (like signs for our hotel room door, including a signature sheet that people actually signed!), bouncing on the bed (we did waves and everything XD), and generally having fun until everyone finally went to bed.
Saturday
The next morning we all got up (which proved to be a little hard for everyone after staying up so late.. hehe), took showers, and put on our costumes. That day we all cosplayed—me as Presea of course, Ashley as Shorty from Bust-a-move, Amy as (manga) Lina Inverse from Slayers, J.J. as (anime) Lina Inverse, Eryn as Ukyou from Ranma 1/2, and Allison (who'd just got there that morning) as Nuriko from Fushigi Yuugi. Then we went downstairs to the lobby to wait for my friend Areli and her sister, who had told me to wait for them.. only they were like an hour late.. but when they finally got there we ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant (where they way overcharge stuff.. stupid hotels) and then went back over to the Westin. I was still in complete awe of all the cosplayers just walking around, and how surprisingly well I fit in in my own costume. Anywhere else, I would have been considered out of place, but here at A-Kon I was just another cosplayer.. it was a really cool feeling. Anyway, we went back up to the dealer's room, which was where I took most of my cosplay pictures. I was amazed at my newfound confidence—before this I would never have dreamed of asking people who were virtual strangers if I could take a picture of them, but somehow my inhibitions fell away and I found myself taking picture after picture of cosplayers. All the pretty costumes there just added to the overall mood of awe that I maintained for most of the con. As for my costume, no one really took pictures of me; I think there's one of me and Eryn somewhere (I look like crap so I didn't bother saving it), but other than that no one really recognized me. At one point some guy came up to me and asked me who I was.. when I replied "Presea.. you know, from Magic Knight Rayearth" he was like "Oh, PRE-sea [pronouncing it WRONG!]" and walked off. I probably should have carried around a Mokona to jog people's memories, but I didn't have one so I couldn't. Oh well.. there were so many other great costumes there that I didn't really care. Anyway, being that it was my beloved dealer's room, when I wasn't taking pictures I was buying awsome anime stuff, and here's a list of what I bought that day:
Two Cardcaptor Sakura plastic folders (with pretty manga pics on both sides! I love them!)
Tomoyo figurine (complete with video camera!)
Set of 4 CCS manga posters (This is one of the best things I bought.. the posters are really good and are still on my wall a year later)
After we were all done in the dealer's room, we went back to the hotel, and hung out there playing with our new stuff. Then Areli and her sister went home, and we put on our swimsuits to go swim in the pool. Whee, that was fun! The Sheraton's pool is really cool, it has waterfalls and stuff.. hehe. After swimming we came back to the hotel room and watched TV.. J.J. got really mad when me and Allison made fun of Xena: Warrior Princess, but for some reason we just couldn't stop laughing. Anyway, then we went downstairs to see if we could get into the cosplay (it was being held at our hotel). We had started walking towards the end of the super-long line when suddenly me and Allison noticed that the others weren't following us anymore. Figuring they'd left, we went down the stairs to where the end of the line was, but we decided that it was too long and left. It turns out that the others had stopped following us because Allison and me had been the last two people allowed in line for cosplay, and they had turned everyone after us away. So if we had just stayed in line, we could have gotten into the cosplay! Oh well, me, Eryn, Allison, and Amy went to one of the video rooms in our hotel to watch the Ah My Goddess movie instead. It was the first time I'd been in a video room, watching anime with a bunch of other people, and it was really cool. I liked how everyone would laugh or say "aww" or whatever together, although I couldn't see the subtitles at all because of all the people in front of me. Because of that, we had no idea what was going on, so we eventually left.
After that, we went back to the Westin, where some interesting things happened.. we saw these guys who told us to come to room 712 for a room party, and so we went up to that room to check it out. It turned out to be like four guys and a bunch of strobe lights.. hehehe.. so we left.. ran away, actually. XD The people on the elevator we went back down on were so cool. When the doors opened, the elevator was already full, so the guys in it were going "Go! Go! Go! Go!" to try and fit in as many people as possible. Then once we were all in there, the elevator had another floor to stop on, so the guys told us all to start humming at the same time, so we all went "Hmmmmm........" as the doors opened on this lady who had the funniest look on her face to see everyone humming. It was hilarious.. after we got downstairs, we looked in on the gaming rooms for a bit. They were playing Dance Dance Revolution in one, and it was my first time seeing the game (I'd heard about it though). I kind of wanted to play even though I never had before, but I didn't. (And I'm glad I didn't—I would have sucked so much at that time!)
Then we went back to our hotel room to get ready to go to the con dance. Those of us who were still in costumes changed out of them and into 'dance clothes'.. hehehe. Then J.J. left, and the rest of us went over to the Westin for the dance… which sucked. A lot. They were playing really crappy music (like "Twist and Shout"--yeah, okay) and the dance floor was scary and filled with all these weirdos (like this Sailor Moon cosplayer freak dancing.. o_o).. so we left, and had our own party in our hotel room.. hehehe. We turned on the TV to the con's temporary channel, which was playing that night's cosplay skits, so we stayed up until 4 a.m. watching it. One of the funniest skits we saw was this guy who was Zidane from Final Fantasy 9 doing this thing where he was like "I'm so sexy" and describing everything sexy about him, and then he picked up his tail and said "For all you ladies out there.. I am VERY well endowed" and had his hands about 8 inches apart on the tail (so it was like.. you know? yeah, figure it out) and then this other guy came up behind him and pushed his hands to only 2 inches apart! It was so funny!! We were laughing for like five minutes over that.. little did we know that the Zidane guy (Zack) was to become Ashley's boyfriend within the year. That is still SO FREAKY.. *shakes head* Anyway, after the skits ended we all went to bed.
Sunday
We didn't really do much that day.. at 11 a.m. when the dealer's room opened we went over there, and I bought the Cardcaptor Sakura artbook I'd been looking at all weekend (the first manga artbook), which left me with five dollars to buy a Sakura figurine to go with the Tomoyo one I'd gotten on Saturday. Then we went back to our hotel, and I packed up my stuff and went home. Yeay!
My first con was a lot of fun.. not as much fun as it could have been, I realized later--we really didn't take advantage of all the things the con had to offer and spent too much time sitting around in our hotel room--but hey, it was our first time. It was probably one of the most memorable experiences I've ever had, everything was new and exciting to me, and I still compare all the cons I attend to this one. I'll think things like "This dealer's room isn't as big as A-Kon 12's was" or "This lobby isn't as big and cool as the Westin's was", usually without even realizing it. And I still feel nostalgic every time we drive by those two hotels on the Dallas highway, too--but then again, I do that whenever I drive by any hotel that held a con I went to. *sniff* So, looking back on it, it was a really good first-con experience and I'll always remember it as what got all of us hooked on going to cons. ^_^