It's easy to forget the little things when dressing for your first appearance in the Gathering of Nations powwow. The fringes of your buckskin yoke might get caught in a chair. The velcro attaching the leggings might be unacceptably lumpy.

Dina Gilio discovered this and more on Friday as she prepared to dance in the noon grand entry, the first in this week's Gathering of Nations. Two more will be held today, at noon and 6 p.m.

I met Gilio and her boyfriend, David Tune, on Wednesday while they reserved seats for family and friends. At 47, Gilio was to dance for the first time Friday, satisfying the "bug" that bit her after last year's event.

As a first-time powwow observer, I returned Friday to watch her inauguration.

Ninety minutes before the grand entry, in which an estimated 3,000 dancers descend on The Pit floor, the bleachers became an ersatz locker room.

Gilio wore a black sweatshirt, blue shorts and sandals. Her suitcase bulged. Her transformation would occur here. "There's no changing rooms or anything," she said.

Tune estimates that each dancer needs four seats to accommodate all the regalia. He's a longtime dance judge with an eye for style.

"It's such a big deal. The outfits are so elaborate," said Gilio, a Colville whose Indian name is One Heart. "It's the king daddy of all powwows.

Dancers can spend thousands of dollars to buy regalia, or they can toil on them for years.

Gilio's came together in a week. The beaded buckskin yoke once belonged to a full-length dress that she amputated. A full-time student at TVI and an artist, Gilio made the leggings and the green silk brocade dress with Chinese dragon imprints. She already had the deerskin moccasins.

The breastplate - imagine an apron made of six horizontal layers of 4-inch-long ivory colored plastic "hair pins," dotted with purple crystal beads - was given to her by Tune's ex-wife, Bev Moran.

Moran also loaned two white mink skins that would hang from Gilio's braids. These adornments, Tune joked, are traditional decorative roadkill.

But he took the little things seriously.

He studied Gilio as she secured leggings over her socks. He noticed a lump he didn't like; she needed to re-strap the velcro.

He had her stand like a crucifix so he could adjust the yolk and its fringes to ensure they hung properly.

He tamed the left mink skin, which kept turning around on Gilio's shoulder seemingly with a mind of its own.

He tucked one feather in her hair toward the back of her head and tweaked it repeatedly until it stood straight.

The first time she moved any significant distance - like, say, a foot - he cautioned that she must lift the fringes and the breastplate when she walked. Otherwise, they drag on the ground or get stuck in things like chairs.

By 11:20 a.m., Gilio was a work of art made of buckskin, silk, beads, fur and feather. Her silver necklace, which Tune made, shone. Her dark complexion and hair accented the buttery yellow yoke; its fringes melted into the emerald skirt.

"It feels great," Gilio said. "Buckskin feels great. It's heavy. It's going to get heavier with that breastplate."

"You look good. I like it!" Moran told Gilio.

Moran, 47, has danced in the grand entry several times and still finds it "overwhelming." She would support Gilio throughout the event.

"The first time it's really powerful. . . . You see all these dancers coming down. It's so spiritual," she said

She smiled and added: "If you're doing it for the first time, it can be a little scary, too."

Gilio modeled for Tune. He nodded with approval.

With a few moments before the grand entry, Gilio remembered another little thing easily forgotten. She needed to use the restroom.

"That's a cardinal sin!" Tune cried.

"You forget the small stuff, you know," Moran said.

Soon after Gilio returned, the announcer asked dancers to get into position. They're organized by category and age, each stationed at the top of a vertical aisle leading to the floor of The Pit.

The first dancer carried a tall, curved eagle staff. Elders in full feather headdresses followed him; they were followed by the two head dancers, a man and woman who appeared to operate on batteries for their ability to dance every second of the 40-some minute event.

Initially, those first dancers had room to move. But others consumed real estate quickly, and feathers, beads and fans erased any view of The Pit floor.

The event is choreographed so that dancers form concentric ovals, surrounding the eagle staff dancer in the center.

They moved to music of a three-part orchestra: Drums, voices and triangular metal "jingles" that hang from dresses and jingle like Christmas bells.

I kept my eyes out for Gilio and Moran. Tune spotted them first. He raised his right arm; I thought it was some kind of traditional salute. What's that, I asked, trying to be heard over the pounding drums.

"I'm taking a picture."

Gilio and Moran washed along with the rest of the sea. They didn't have enough room to dance with the energy of the head dancers, but they could sway with the beat.

Eventually, they didn't even have enough space to sway.

In the entry's final moments, their fans cranked into overdrive. They and a few other dancers formed a tight circle, like a whirlpool in the ocean. Tune's been to enough grand entries to recognize what happened, even from the bleachers. A dancer fainted.

Tune ran to the floor when he figured out that the fallen dancer was his niece. In a few moments, she was fine and walked off the floor. By this time, the announcer asked everybody to clear the floor to make way for the next event - the jingle dancing competition.

Gilio walked up the aisle to her seat, cooling herself with her eagle feather fan.

"It was awesome," she said of her first grand entry. "It's just too hot. I could have easily passed out. You have to really concentrate. I was very aware of my breathing."

I wondered if she'd want to do it again.

"Oh yeah. Definitely. It's like an initiation."