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Do you have a kid?
Is that kid a girl?
Is that girl between the ages of 3ish and 8ish?
Does that girl love the movie Frozen?
Does the girl who loves Frozen have a halloween costume in mind this year? Let me guess! ELSA?! (Okay, okay, could totally be Anna. Or Olaf even. But so far, the majority of girls that I have encountered who are close to Lily in age have told me that they are going to be Elsa this year. Including Lily.)
I know a lot of you pre-planned. I know a lot of you have been stalking stores and websites for months now in search of the almighty Elsa dress and many of you have been able to procure one.
I also know that many of you DON’T yet have the dress and/or accessories. Reasons may be varied. Maybe up until last Friday your daughter was set on dressing up as LaLaLoopsy only to make a split second 180 turn to Elsa. Maybe you haven’t been able to snag a dress during a local store re-stocking or lottery. Maybe you weren’t willing to spend a mortgage payment on an Elsa dress when they were selling for upwards of $1000 on Ebay earlier this year.
So maybe you’ll find yourself walking into a Halloween costume store only to be greeted by this scene:
That was our local Party City on Thursday night last week. As the perplexed teenage employee told me, “Yeah… it was crazy? Those dresses came in AND WERE COMPLETELY SOLD OUT AND GONE in THREE DAYS!!” Clearly he has no idea of the Frozen Fever that swept this country earlier in the year!
So fortunately, thanks to the wonderful wonderful website that is Zulily, I already had a dress. Nope, it’s not Disney branded. Yup, it’s gorgeous. Nope, it didn’t cost anywhere near what the Disney Store version costs. Make sure you check sites like Zulily (you may need to expedite shipping at this point) and Amazon. Both have some great dress options that won’t break the bank.
I also picked up a non-Frozen branded tiara on Zulily. It’s so gorgeous and only costs a few bucks.
Okay, so back to Party City. I was in serious need of gloves and a wig and, as you saw in the picture above, they had nothing “Frozen” that would fit the bill.
So we started walking around. We found the giant wall of wigs and I almost went with a generic blond wig figuring that I could make do. Then we circled back to the Disney area and I saw the Rapunzel wig. I noted the “extra length” mention on the package and realized that I could probably put a nice long side braid in it. Very Elsa-esque. It worked!
Next on the list was a pair of gloves. Even though Lily kept insisting that Elsa’s gloves cover her fingers (DUH, MOM!) she reluctantly okay’d a generic pair of sequin fingerless gloves for $5.99. We got home and I held them up to the dress. Holy moly – almost a PERFECT MATCH!!
We have umpteen pairs of princess-y dress-up shoes around here, but honestly, she’ll probably wear sneakers for trick-or-treating. That night is always comfort over authenticity!
The final icing on the cake was this glow in the dark wand that was a complete impulse purchase on the way to the register. For $.99 she can wave her glowing wand to her heart’s desire!
So that’s how I will be pulling together an Elsa costume without spending a billion dollars or even having a Disney-branded dress!
Tell me about your costume ideas! What are your kids dressing up as this year? Any tricks or tips to share?
Where did you get the gloves?… That’s all I need for my little girl costume !
Party City! They were fairly cheap too – $5.99!
This is so awesome! This was my plan too, long before I seen this post. Great minds think alike. :-) My daughter has the dress up dress of Else already, a nice pair of silver shoes, tons of tiaras and wands to choose from, and she was Rapunzel last year, so my mind went the same direction as yours.
That’s perfect! They’re going to look great! :)