Fancy Dress - The Challenges and the Hilarity

On Friday night we went to our friend's birthday party - themed sci-fi & fantasy fancy dress. Now I love fancy dress parties. I used to do lots of acting so I always enjoy dressing up as a different "character" but I also love the chance to be creative with costumes. The one problem with this is that I conjure up fantastic images in my head of what I will look like in my awesome costume, and the reality is never quite right. Friday night's attempt was one such. Nevertheless I think it turned out reasonably well considering...

I decided to go as a Blood Elf Mage from World of Warcraft. Some of our friends wanted me to go as Galadriel from Lord of the Rings, but a) my hair is too short nowadays and I didn't want to buy a wig or extensions, b) I would have to obtain a long (no doubt gorgeous) white gown (not my wedding dress!) and then avoid getting tomato sauce on it - BBQ, virtually impossible, c) I would need to look ethereal and stunning at the same time - I am not Cate Blanchett... and d) I didn't feel I could be creative enough with the costume. So, I opted for Blood Elf.

I started by searching Google Images for ideas. This mostly churned out photos of hardcore WoW players at BlizzCon with replica costumes - costumes they had slaved over for days or that they had had custom-made at great expense. I have no sewing skills whatsoever and couldn't afford to have custom-made Judgement armour - why would I want to anyway? What would I do with it afterwards? So I decided to go for the RP Mage look. I knew only three others, including my husband and the birthday boy, who were attending the party that have played WoW and therefore I had little to fear about not looking genuine.

                                                                                    

The first step to my costume was to find a dress. I went shopping in Brighton with my husband and the birthday boy a couple of weeks ago. Brighton was a nightmare. People everywhere. Thankfully, however, we had a very productive shopping trip. First we tried Snooper's Paradise, which is an amazing flea-market style shop in the North Laine. My husband and our friend both found long leather jackets for £25 each! That was their Steam Punk Hero or Villain costumes started! My husband also found a pair of brass binoculars to hang round his neck. I looked admiringly at several beautiful vintage dresses, especially Medieval style, that would have done the trick but were tear-inducingly expensive and so out of the question. Then we moved onto Revamp, a fancy dress shop. And outside was a sale rail of ex-hire outfits. I found a long black dress with black veils attached to each strap to form sort of sleeves/cloak. Perfect, and a definite bargain at £10! My husband then found a waistcoat for only £3 over the road. We then went to rest our aching feet and quench our thirst with fruit smoothies in the Guarana Bar (an old favourite haunt from our sixth-form days), before heading back towards the town centre where the car was parked. There I battled my way through gangs of horribly fashionable teenage girls and young women in New Look to find a suitable belt, which thankfully I did, for less than a fiver. So far so good.

Then we got out of there and went home. Next, I had to obtain ears. The elf ears that you can buy in fancy dress shops are the LOTR ones. Thanks to Google I discovered that Blizzard sell official Blood Elf and Night Elf ears. Blood elves have fairly large and long ears as you can see in the screenshots of my hunter above and mage below. I was lucky enough to find some being sold on Amazon in the UK rather than having to purchase some from the States which would have cost me an arm and a leg. I like making an effort with fancy dress costumes, but I don't like spending a fortune to do so. The ears arrived and they looked cool, except for the thin black band that held them together and keeps them on your ears. If you want to wear the ears right the band has to sit across your forehead. If you cut the band off then I'm pretty sure the ears won't stay on. I have small(ish) ears, so found they elf ears slipped off very easily. I think they would work better on men's ears. The ears also came with some rather dubious looking make-up - the instructions said, 'Do not use the purple make-up near the eyes.' Er, ok then...

So, final purchases were cheap make-up from Boots - eyeshadow, eyeliner, and bright red lipstick - and a purple silk hairscarf that I was able to cover the black band with - it also looks very like a Mageweave silk band that low-level tailors can make in WoW - I am nothing if not authentic, haha!

Thankfully I already had enough of the other items I required. A staff from when I played the Chorus Leader in Aristophanes' Thesmophorizusae at university (a large wooden stick that a friend of mine had found in the university woods!), a purple pashmina cum sash for the belt to sit on so that it didn't catch on the dress, black sparkly pumps, and mascara. My brother leant me a dagger in its sheath that I could hang off the belt. So, if you are a WoW nerd I managed to do the impossible - have a stave and an enchanted dagger all at once, OMG LOL ^^ right? Is there any way I can express sarcasm on this blog?

So the next challenge was putting it altogether. The costume itself worked like a charm but the trouble came with putting on the ears. I am ashamed to say I had something of a childish hissy-fit over this and went into a temporary self-hating tantrum, declaring that I wasn't going to bother because I just looked stupid! I know, silly huh?

Anyway, I got over it and managed to make it work, yey! The party was a good laugh with some pretty awesome costumes. I'm biased but I must say that my husband looked very dashing as a Steam Punk Hero, complete with his replica flint-lock pistol and cogs around his neck (shh, don't tell anyone that they are from Gears of War...)

Other costumes included Dr Who, 3 fairies, Aslan, Men in Black, Neo from The Matrix, a Jedi (with an incredibly cool lightsabre), a star and some indistinguishable Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings characters. But the best costume of all, which could only be worn for photos as it was immensely impractical, was that of a friend of ours who we had given some boxes to...he came as a robot. He'd put boxes together and used various bits of tubing and lots of silver spray paint to make a fantastic costume. He could hardly see, barely walk, and certainly couldn't eat or drink, but he made a brilliant entrance and definitely got the most cheers of the evening. That was the height of creativity.

I've been to many fancy dress costumes and I've dressed as many things including a fairy (many times), a pirate, Puss in Boots, Rainbow Brite, a bunny, a princess, the list goes on. Each time I relish the opportunity to be creative and come up with something different to what other people might try, even if there are other fairies at a party I make sure I am my own special brand of fairy! My Blood Elf costume is not worthy of special recognition by WoW fans, but it was fun to try and I enjoyed making it my own.

Now, to persuade another friend to host a fancy dress party in the near future... What theme shall we suggest? Ah yes, I forgot to mention that it was our fault our friend opted for fancy dress, we're just persuasive like that xD

Screenshots & photo my own.