Start Planning Your Halloween Costume Now

Whether you’re a die-hard Halloween fan or someone who has to pull together a costume for a fancy dress party, you should start planning your Halloween costume now, if there’s any chance of you wearing one.

After all, you don’t want to be caught unawares, forced to wear whatever you can cobble together from your wardrobe. You’ll look like you don’t really want to get involved, but the only way to really do fancy dress is to go all in.

Luckily, planning your Halloween costume needn’t take a whole lot of time or effort.

Planning your Halloween costume: this weekend

These are the things you should consider right away.

What kind of fancy dress do you want to have?

This is a question of whether you want to make your costume or simply buy it. Often, making a costume is cheaper and will be met with a better reaction, but purchasing a costume – particularly a clever or unusual one – can save a lot of time and still get a good reaction.

If you want to assemble or craft your outfit, give yourself plenty of time to gather the materials you will need and to put them all together. If you are purchasing your costume, factor in shipping times or the fancy dress shops’ increased demand (and decreased supply) the closer you get to Halloween night.

What do you want to be?

This is a secondary question because your crafting abilities or budget will heavily influence what you will be able to go as.

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Take a look online: there are loads of tutorials and photos showing you how to make costumes of everything from bats to ghosts to those troll dolls from back in the day. You can search for “easy to make fancy dress costumes”, “inexpensive costumes to make” or “fancy dress on a budget”.

If you are going to buy a costume, take advantage of the internet’s ability to let you compare prices. Check lots of different websites for fancy dress options that fit your budget, then see if you can find that costume or something similar on another site.

Be sure to select a costume that is appropriate for the weather, includes reflective elements if the outfit is dark and you will be wandering around at night, and is something you feel comfortable in. These should each be as big a consideration as anything else, as you’ll be wearing the costume for a long time. You don’t want to be uncomfortable and irritable the whole time you’re wearing it. And you certainly don’t want to risk getting run over because drivers can’t see you.

Can you make something out of what you already have?

Sometimes the best homemade costumes can be made out of things you already have. One of the easiest, cheapest costumes you can make, for example, is the classic ghost costume. Just grab a white bed sheet, cut out eyeholes and you’re ready to go. All you need is a sheet and some scissors.

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There are also a large number of tutorials on last-minute, cheap fancy dress options that usually can be made out of your own clothes or other materials you have laying around the house. Still, it’s best to get an idea now of what you have, what you might need to get and how long you have to assemble everything.

Planning your Halloween costume: the next couple of weeks

Once you have decided what you are going to be, you need to do these things.

Gather your accessories, makeup and other accoutrements.

Planning your Halloween costume means pulling everything together beforehand, especially the more common elements. All the typical Halloween accessories – plastic pitchforks, food dye, fake blood and thick makeup – are all harder to find the closer you get to the actual holiday, so you need to gather them up in the next week if you are going to use them.

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If your costume is a little more unusual, you may not need to rush to gather materials like that, since there won’t be a run on them. Still, those kinds of costumes often take time to put together, so you will still want to gather up your materials as soon as possible.

Give yourself time to assemble your costume.

Put together your outfit for the next couple of weeks. Give yourself time to do it and redo it, until you’ve put it together exactly the way you want it to be. Also, practice putting on your makeup now, so that it looks perfect on the night.

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Have a great Halloween!

This entire process of planning your Halloween costume and wearing it should be fun, not stressful. Have fun with your fancy dress concept. Enjoy the process of picking out your fancy dress, putting it together, applying your gruesome or amazing makeup and getting reactions from friends, family and neighbours. Most of all, make sure your costume is comfortable, appropriate for the situation and something you really love.

 

Now that you’re thinking about your Halloween fancy dress, what are you going as this Halloween?