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My wedding was back in January and I purchased an Ouma dress for my reception and am now trying to turn it into a Halloween costume (the tutu is white, it would be easier if it were black).Any ideas on fun ways to convert your wedding dress into a costume?
-Moira
Let’s see… there’s zombie brides, princess brides, ghost brides, the bride of Frankenstein, the Corpse Bride, Bridezilla or Bridethulhu! What else can you think up? Bonus points if you have used your wedding dress as a Halloween costume, and extra points for photos!
I’ll have to either dig up photos or pull it out of the closet and take pictures. But a few years ago I scrounged thrift stores til I found the perfect wedding dress for $6. Then I took some blue spray paint and created a corpse bride dress. I’ve worn it a couple times and get a bunch of compliments on it and it was super easy to tear up and spray on some corpse bridey blue.
I found a thrift store wedding dress and husband splattered some homemade blood on it, me, and my blonde wig, and I transformed into Baby Firefly in the scene in House of 1000 Corpses where she crazily stabs people in a white dress.
Cobwebs! You might be able to affix some that are meant as decorations, or draw them on if you’re confident with a pen.
Miss Havisham from Great Expectations! You’ll need wrinkles for your face, and add a few spiders to your skirts. I also carried a copy of the novel, but then I’m an English teacher. 🙂
OMG, I can NOT love this comment enough! I can see it! Love Great Expectations! Great idea 🙂
If you can get some speckled paint and some wings, you could go as a Weeping Angel from Doctor Who.
http://imaginationlane.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/weeping-angels2.jpg
Check out this Weeping Angel costume!
http://www.therpf.com/f24/doctor-who-blink-weeping-angel-costume-49264/
An “Ex-Wife”.
Some wedding dress fabrics can be dyed, though the results can be really uneven, especially if there are multiple fabrics at work. Start early if you want to try dying so you can have a backup plan if it doesn’t work. That could help it transition into a princess dress, some sort of period costume or an awesome fairy garb.
I heard a guy talking about how he cut a wedding dress in half lengthwise and the same with a tux and sewed the halves together so he was half bride half groom…
My (female) gym teacher did this one year when I was in junior high. She had a ponytail on one side of her head even, so her hair was short on the groom side and long on the bride side. It was awesome!
Wear wings and sparkles and be a fairy. That’s what I’m doing with an old prom dress this year.
I was gonna suggest wings and a tiara for a fairy princess. I’ve rocked this costume with my old wedding dress a couple time. Once I was even being paid!
That is the idea I am going with so far. I have an awesome pair of glitter pumps that I picked up from ModCloth (my wedding shoes of course lol) that are perfect for fluttering about in! Thanks!
You should be the Ghost of Christmas Present from Scrooged! Carry a toaster to smack people with!
http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/scrooged/16.gif
One of my friends has a Halloween party every year where the theme is to dress as a song. This year I’m just going to wear my dress as-is, and be any wedding-related song anyone can think of 😉
Psycho bride. all you need is a decapitated fiancé and a bloody bouquet. (I advise on using an artificial fiancé.)
For our wedding I had a fancy head piece of stacked red and white roses and I’m planning on using it as part of a Dia De Los Muertos style costume this Halloween.
Urgh, 5 mins is not enough time for me to edit!
I’m not going to be wearing my wedding dress but I’m sure some styles of dress would suit the DDLM look. Especially combined with a black veil/shawl, painted skull face and a lot of flowers.
and for the non-scary Halloween costumes…
My cousin made a Tooth Fairy costume. She made a wand with a (foam-core) tooth on the end and wore her wedding dress and tiara. I thought it was funny. The Tooth Fairy giving the kids candy so they would lose their teeth. Hee hee hee.
I got my dress for cheap at Good Will, so it seemed only fitting to reuse it! The following year, I cut it up and cover it in fake blood. Worked pretty well, I think.
http://i.imgur.com/ztD4H.jpg
A coworker got a wedding dress from Goodwill that had a REALLY full skirt. She spray painted it pink, made a huge paper crown and sceptor, and went as Glinda from Wizard of Oz. (She must have run out of paint because it ended up with an ombre effect, but it looked great!)
A very specific one that my parents did one year: My dad is named Frank, and his costume basically involved him carrying around a beer stein all night. My mom wore her old wedding dress, so they could be “Frank and Stein”, and “the bride of Frankenstein”.
Having now googled Ouma Dresses, and seeing that you said this is your reception dress, I am wondering if it’s short (like this one: http://www.etsy.com/listing/60304961/tea-length-wedding-dress-a-whimsical). A lot of those Ouma Dresses are not explicitly wedding-y and could make great party dresses just by incorporating a little color (colored waist band and a few beads on the bodice or something). It seems a shame to sacrifice that versatility by doing something as irreversible as spray pain, tearing it up, etc. Especially since, in my experience, Halloween costumes tend to be worn about as often as wedding dresses.
If you go the fairy princess route, you can still keep the dress functional for your next semi-formal event. Or you could be a ballerina. Or a prom night ghost (just make up the rest of you to be white like the dress and add a white corsage). Or heck, be an incredibly fancy white witch: http://www.buycostumes.com/Good-Witch-Hat-White/21289/ProductDetail.aspx?REF=SCE-PlusBox&gclid=CK-GxNq1hrMCFQyCnQod7nIAnQ
It just seems like your dress probably has many years of use left in it. I would try to find a costume that allows for that. Also, that witch hat is epic.
If it is a sylphides tutu style gown I would totally rock the ballerina look by being Moira Shearer’s character in the Red Shoes! You’d get to wear all that awesome campy ballet make-up, RED SHOES, have crazy hair AND still have your gown intact!
Yes! It is a short, white tutu and I would never spray paint it (although I LOVE all the suggestions that involve spray paint). As a redhead named Moira who happens to look like Moira Shearer, this would be PERFECT. Thank you!
Oooh! That’s just too fabulous Moira! You could get all literal and see if you can find a pair of shears. Please, if you do it, share pics? I’d love to see!
I saw an image once of someone who had turned a wedding dress into a hunger games costume (the scene where her dress burns off..) with black feather boas and some red fabric. It was quite the costume, and can be easily found by googling “katnis wedding dress haloween”.
A few years ago I took a big thrift store wedding dress and used it to make a headless bride costume. You can see pictures and the full tutorial at this link: http://www.instructables.com/id/Headless-Corpse-Bride-from-Duct-Tape/
After the ceremony at my wedding we took some pictures with the bridal party in the cemetery. We acted out a zombie attack on the bride and groom. Now for Halloween, we are going as a zombie bride and groom. I did not want to use my actual dress which my mother custom made for me, but I found a dress in a thrift shop that was eerily similar to mine. Thankfully, it had some damage so I did not mind ruining it further. I will post a link to my blog post after the Halloween party so you can see pictures.
I like all the comments here, but if you’re willing to ruin the dress a bit, you can go as a zombie bride.
For a haunted house costume a few years ago, I bought a used bridesmaid dress & a couple yards of lace that was a similar color. I attacked both with a wire brush, the kind you scrape paint & rust off with, until it was as ragged as I wanted. I sewed the lace on in patches, especially over the straps, & pinned some extra lace in my hair. After that, I used a fan brush & went to town with some red paint. When that dried, I took the whole mess outside & stomped it into the dirt. It turned out gloriously.
Do you have pics?
Thank you so much for all the suggestions! I love my dress too much to spray paint it but these are all great ideas for costumes! Thanks Offbeat Home!
I am seriously considering going as Tiffany the doll from Bride of Chucky.
One year, my husband and I went as Wedding Day and Wedding Night for Halloween.
http://i.imgur.com/h0fTo.jpg?1
I turned my wedding dress into a tooth fairy costume! I actually didn’t alter the dress at all, I just bought fairy wings, stole one of my daughter’s tiaras, and made a pretty wand. It was great!