What To Think About When Shopping For Kids’ Halloween Costumes

Every year Halloween is becoming an increasingly bigger deal in Australia. Most houses will be decorated in a spooky theme, plenty of people will have bowls of lollies waiting and kids will swarm the streets waiting to trick or treat. Halloween is meant to be a spooky, but also a fun time of year. Yet sometimes the stress of not only choosing a costume, but also shopping for one can become too much. 

To put the fun back into Halloween, treat a costume like an everyday outfit. Choose it for stylistic, practical and enjoyment purposes. More importantly, get on the front foot and organise costumes early in order to eliminate stress. Organising costumes early also eliminates the time that indecisive kids have to change costume ideas. By taking a different approach to costume shopping you will find the holiday to be more enjoyable and care free. 

The Top 10 costume ideas for kids 

For kids’ Halloween outfits, emulating their favourite television or movie characters is an idea that never fails to impress. Some popular characters are:

1. Harry Potter
2. Cinderella
3. Buzz Lightyear
4. Barbie 
5. Woody from Toy Story
6. Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz
7. Captain America 
8. Belle from Beauty and the Beast
9. Thor
10. Captain Marvel 

Get inspired

It’s always hard to lock in a Halloween costume. Even when kids see a list of costume ideas, they may not be able to decide on just one costume. The best thing to do then is to try and pick a costume idea that fits perfectly into what the feel and look of the year is. Specifically this means outlining a Halloween style. 

A costume is a great way to let people see a side of yourself that you don’t usually get a chance to share. It’s also a great outlet for emphasising the side of you that people already know and love. With this in mind, is your kids’ Halloween style going to be scary, cute or angry? Once you’ve worked that out you can start thinking about specific costumes. 

Once you have an idea of what you’re looking for in mind, it’s time to look online. Looking online for inspiration can be tricky. This is because there are thousands of ideas which could lead towards being indecisive. That’s why it’s always best to have a general idea in mind before turning to the internet. What the internet will do once you have the costume idea is to help you figure out what you will need to make the costume or whether you can just order it online instead. 

Consider a group theme

One of the biggest problems around Halloween time is when kids start sharing what their outfits are going to be. Your child could go to school one day happy with the idea of being Harry Potter for Halloween and come home that afternoon and want to be Captain America. The sudden turn around is usually because their friendship group is all going as superheroes or some other completely different theme. 

Instead of having the last minute stress of changing costumes, consider getting the friendship group of kids to all have costumes under the same theme. It will be a great bonding experience for them all and instead of needing to buy accessories to complement the costumes, they can all be each other’s accessories. Matching costumes are the ultimate show of friendship and looks great to onlookers when a group of wizards, Toy Story characters or superheroes passes by. 

Organisation is key 

The key when organising a Halloween costume is to be as specific as possible. This means that your child isn’t just a wizard or a superhero. Specifically they are going to be Harry Potter or Captain Marvel. Once you get specific, shopping becomes easier, because you’ll know what to look for. 

Start shopping for the costume as soon as possible. This leaves time to browse different stores or order online and still have time to send it back for a new costume in case it doesn’t fit or the product is damaged. 

Treat Halloween costumes like an outfit for a special event. Try it on, get a general feel for the product and, if needed, give it a clean or an iron before wearing. That way the kids can’t say last minute that the costume wasn’t what they were expecting. 

Being organised also means sticking to a budget. More likely than not your child isn’t going to wear the costume again, so don’t go overboard on the outfit and all the accessories. 

Halloween night 

Halloween is a night to celebrate the spectacular and more often than not, spectacular costumes originate from weeks, if not months of work. So whatever your little one wants to dress up as, start organising early to make sure that their costume is the best it can be. By no means does this imply that the costume has to be expensive. But instead, a costume that fits and has all the right accessories to be exactly the Buzz Lightyear, Captain Marvel, Harry Potter or Cinderella your child had in mind. 

Are you ready for Halloween? Come visit The Marketplace Gungahlin for all your Halloween shopping needs and more!