Fancy dress ideas

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My friend has decided to throw a big birthday party, which is to be in a ‘magical’ outdoor setting with a fairytale theme, and we are all to wear fancy dress. I quite enjoy dressing up, and half the fun is devising a costume from whatever we can find; hiring or buying a fancy-dress outfit just isn’t half as amusing. My partner, on the other hand, hates fancy dress and in fact would never wear anything but old trousers and T-shirt if he could get away with it. The girls have already decided – Little One wants to go as a princess (which is easy as we have several princess outfits in the dressing-up trunk) and Big One wants to go as the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland, using a top hat I made for the same purpose years ago. Obviously there are plenty of fairy tales, but many of them do tend to feature princesses or princes–think of Cinderella, the prince and the pauper, the frog prince, the swan princess, the princess and the pea, the twelve dancing princesses–which is likely to result in a plethora of people at the party looking fairly similar and having to explain which particular prince/princess they happen to be. The same goes for witches, with the added disadvantage that you need to make yourself look hideous. We don’t want to go together as the cow from Jack and the Beanstalk either! So we have been racking our brains for things to dress up in. Current favourites are the ‘auxiliary characters’ such as the frog from the frog prince, a swan from the swan princess, Dick Whittington’s cat, the Goose that lays the golden eggs; my partner even thought of modifying a large cardboard box, an old sheet, and a small green pom-pom to go as one of the mattresses from the Princess and the Pea. While that did make us all laugh it might make eating, drinking and dancing at the party rather awkward! So I think he has now settled on the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, as we do have a rabbit mask already and getting together a white outfit, a pocket watch and a waistcoat shouldn’t be too hard. We also have a pig mask and a curly pink tail I made for another past party (where the theme was ‘things that fly’) so I’m toying with the idea of finding a pink outfit and going as one of the three little pigs. What would you dress as? All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2018.