Coordinating Group Halloween Costumes With Your Roommates

By Garth Brunner

Happy Spooky Season! As you and your roommates prepare for Halloween parties or trick-or-treating, the idea of group costumes has likely come up! However, sometimes coordinating the perfect group costume to do with your friends is hard! After all, you want to be unique, but not so unique that no one knows who you are. In addition to that, there’s agreeing on who to be and how to dress, which is much easier said than done. Don’t get scared before the tricks start!

There are some easy steps to coordinate a group Halloween costume with your friends or your roommates that will leave everyone happy. Here is how to coordinate group Halloween costumes with your roommates this October.

Image via Pexels

Discuss Favorite Media

First, discuss some of your favorite shows, movies, games, or books. If you all have similar interests or tastes, this will be easy! Think about iconic groups that you and your roommates would love to dress as. If you don’t share a common interest, your costume ideas do not have to be from the media! They can be groups such as condiments, college majors, or types of cats! This is the best time to get creative as you brainstorm!

If everyone is still having trouble coming up with a group costume you all like and agree on, there’s nothing wrong with searching the World Wide Web. Be aware that, if it’s online, it’s likely been done hundreds of times and you can risk having the same costume as someone else. This isn’t bad, but just decide how important originality is to you and your group.

Whether you have hundreds of ideas or just a few, start to narrow it down. You can do this by either having each roommate strike down one idea at a time until you have one left or you can spin a wheel to see what gets picked or knocked off. Even indecisive people can do this!

Share Pictures of Inspiration

Once you have all chosen a theme or group to dress as it is time to look at inspiration for your costumes. Search for other similar themes to see how you can put your own twist on it! This will also help get you on the same page of what aesthetic you’re going for this Halloween season. The best sites to search are Pinterest, Instagram, or a quick Google search which might lead you to another helpful site. Search for people who cosplay those characters or groups or see what kind of costumes are readily available.

Decide How to Dress

Now that you’ve looked at thousands of pictures for inspiration, you and your group have narrowed down how you want to look. You still need to decide how exactly you are going to proceed. Are you buying costumes, making them yourselves, or doing a very simple version in clothes you already have? This is an essential step so that everyone is on the same page and matches. If one of you shows up in street clothes while the other is in an elaborate costume, you’ll all be embarrassed!

If you decide to buy or make your costumes, you need to discuss everyone’s budget. Someone with a higher budget can buy a much higher quality costume than someone with a lower one, which can lead to financial insecurity and embarrassment. Go back to the pictures you found and try to guess the price or what you could reasonably find or make.

Make Roles Clear

Next, you need to make the roles in the group costume very clear. So many group costumes have been ruined because two people thought they were the same character! Everyone should decide who they want to be. If two people want to dress as the same character, it needs to be clear who takes what so you don’t have a sticky situation. The best way to do this would be to write it out in a group text or hang it up and ensure everyone sees it by interacting with the message or the board.

Keep Each Other Updated

Lastly, as you all work on your costumes, you need to keep each other updated. If you need help, if something is not shipping in time, or any other problems you run into, it is best that you tell your roommates right away. If you need to switch costumes, it is better to have a few days’ notice than an hour’s.

By showing each other the steps you’re following into completing your costume, you can get feedback or advice so that you guys match. Plus, this helps with the potential double or mismatched costumes. It might even be a fun idea to work on your costumes together while you play Halloween movies and eat candy. What better way to prepare for the season, right?