1. Pick a theme - whether you go for pirates and mermaids or Baywatch, it’s easier for your guests if you give them a theme to work with.

2. Have spare costumes - some people will not show up in fancy dress and rather than letting them get away with it, have a couple of Hawaiian shirts, some grass skirts and garlands and make them get dressed up anyway. But to put a little spin on things, make the women wear the shirts and speedos and the men the grass skirts and garlands - that way they will take the ‘fancy dress’ part of their invitation a bit more seriously in future.

3. Cater carefully - you don’t want food that’s difficult to eat, makes a mess or, even worse ends up in your pool and looks disgusting. We suggest that food is set up well away from your pool area and you have a line of bins between there and the water so that people can dump anything they don’t want to eat and get rid of empty paper plates. The bins don't have to look horrible, you can cover them in wrapping paper or even artificial grass, and then put some battery powered fairy lights around them, so that they add to the appearance of the whole event.

1. Organise a clean up crew - we’ve ‘hired’ a couple of friends to clean up after outdoor parties and it works brilliantly. They go round at the end of the evening and empty all the bins, pick up the discarded costumes etc, and then we treat them to a manicure or facial by giving them a voucher to use when they please. It frees us up to enjoy our event without having to think about the bit at the end which is always a mood killer!

• Think white - think dirty. At least one bar in Magaluf will be having a white party every single week of the season - and from Club Med to Sandals, white parties are likely to be high on the fun list, so make sure you pack one outfit that works for a white party. Think “White Russian” and “Officer and a Gentleman” to be sure you get past the bouncers - a bed-sheet turned into a toga or your white skivvies with some beads just won’t make the cut. Bear in mind that a white party may turn into a foam or paint party at some point, so don’t bring anything you can’t afford to get ruined.

• Pack like a pro. More and more, we're trying to get everything into our hand luggage and for Ibiza and Magaluf, savvy travellers have worked out how to get seven outfits into a cabin bag. We have suggestions for those tourists too. For women, pack a bright bikini and some costume jewellery - with a pair of net harem pants you’ve got a stylish oriental dancing girl outfit without taking up more than a tiny amount of extra space in your bag. For men, a linen blazer and a pair of shades can be worn in the day but let you get into Gatsby or Brideshead mode for a fancy dress party - just make sure you pack some hair gel for a super smooth hairstyle and a silk carnation for your buttonhole.

• Team win. It’s still the case that team fancy dress will get you to the front of the queue in many Magaluf nightspots so if you can’t think of anything else, ‘dirty Smurfs’ (pack some blue body paint) may do you a big favour when you’re trying to get into a popular club. 

That’s why we’ve been thinking about what can replace our favourite June costume event and we think we have an idea!  June is a great month for fancy dress parties and with the arrival of Wonder Woman on the big screen, it’s the perfect time to get your super-hero garb on and throw a barbecue or drinks party. Whether you opt for straight superheroes or a heroes and villains event you can organise superhero drinks and even set up some games on the Wii or other platform to test superhero skills.

The way to make superhero cocktails is to create a punch - we favour creme de menthe or blue curaçao to give the base punch the right colour, mixed in a large clear bowl. Buy a small amount of dry ice and - using tongs - drop a reasonable sized chunk of dry ice into the bowl right before you serve your punch. It will fog and swirl impressively and because the dry ice always sinks to the bottom of the bowl it won’t affect the quality of your drinks. Make sure you’re in charge of serving the punch so that you can remove the dry ice as soon as you’re ready, to ensure nobody accidentally ladles it up into their own glass as it can definitely cause cold burns if it touches any kind of skin at all. 

May’s a good month if you’re looking for a chance to get into cheap fancy dress. First there’s May the Fourth when you can release your inner Jedi. Look out for lots of Princess Leia fancy dress outfits this year, in honour of Carrie Fisher who played the character and died in December 2016. But whether you’re a Darth Maul  or a Yoda, a Chewbacca or an Ewok, this is your chance to celebrate the film series in your own special way. And of course, Rogue One’s DVD release is giving the franchise a whole new lease of life.

Eurovision Fancy Dress

Between 9 -13 May 2017 those who love Eurovision will be able to indulge their passion! The annual event used to be slated for tackiness but these days its viewed as a bit of an opportunity to enjoy some of the simpler pleasures of life: reality TV, pop music, dressing up and singing along.

There’s two ways of approaching the Eurovision fancy dress party - one is the patriotic route, where you can choose a Union Jack minidress if you’re a Brit, some lederhosen if you’re backing the Swiss entry and so on, and the other way is to celebrate some of the great Eurovision winners: Lulu, Dana, Conchita Wurst and many more … and of course if there are four of you, dressing up as ABBA or Brotherhood of Man is also an option.

Plenty of bars will be offering live-screen Eurovision with themed cocktails and prizes for the best fancy dress, so practice your moves and learn your lyrics for maximum party fun!

It’s traditional to fly the flag, of course, and then a lot of people choose to wear England’s national flower, the rose, to commemorate the day. Local festivities can vary widely:

• London has a big ‘Feast of St George’ in Trafalgar Square - a cross between a street party and a market, where there is live music and celebrity chefs cooking English food.
• Liverpool goes one better by having an entire two day event, held in the St George’s Quarter, the daytime activities are very family friendly.
• Finally, Nottingham has a traditional St George's Day parade which draws substantial crowds.

However you celebrate St George’s Day, we hope you do it in fancy dress style!

Six year old CRJ had really got into the spirit of the fancy dress day in Madrid, with a furry mask and boots, sort of half Puss in Boots and half Wookie and totally cute and committed. However his dad was wearing all-black with a white scary face mask and black cape. It looked like he’d hardly bothered. At Cheap Fancy Dress we think that it’s not so much what you spend on your costume as the commitment that you make to wearing your costume with style. So we took a bit of time to think about what costumes would be best for a Cristiano Ronaldo who really wanted to wear fancy dress the way he plays football and here’s what we came up with:

1. Best for six pack abs - we all know how Ronaldo likes to flash his muscles so we thought the Village People Native American costume would be ideal for that
2. Ronaldo’s stealth and ability to get past the opposition would seem to make him a natural for a Ninja outfit
3. Because he has the best moves, we also think that he’d be attracted to the male Dirty Dancing costume - especially because the slogan on the back is ‘Nobody puts Baby in a Corner’ and we all know that Ronaldo is brilliant at corners!

So we’re hoping that if Ronaldo gets to take his little boy to the same fancy dress event next year, he’ll have taken our advice and picked a fancy dress outfit that makes the most of his advantages and gives us all something really worth looking at. 

Fancy dress themed pub crawls are a brilliant way to have fun and raise money for good causes, and most publicans would be delighted to host a planned event that brings business to their doors. Of course pubs aren’t the only places that are happy to host fancy dress costume events, we’ve also seen several ‘coffee crawls’ in major cities where families can participate in travelling from coffee shop to coffee shop discovering treats available in local independent establishments. There’s even been a market crawl, where schoolchildren in fancy dress were taken from stall to stall on a combination treasure hunt and food taster, which introduced them to foods they might not otherwise have eaten.

So if you fancy heading out in fancy dress, we have some great suggestions for you. Whether you’re supporting a Race for Life or any other Wear It Pink event, we have an excellent range of costume accessories to make your outfit sparkle. Then we have lots of Hen Night and Stag Night costumes to bring fun to the most special occasions. Finally, we’ve got great TV costumes to ensure that your place in the pub crawl or fun run is greeted with cheers and laughter. 

In December 2016, one darts fan showed his love for the game by dressing up as a giant dart board and other popular costumes this year include vicars, the Teletubbies and brash suits - especially stripes and Union Jacks.

Group costumes are super popular and our favourite theme for 2017 is fancy dress zoo costumes where one person dresses up as the lion tamer and everybody else chooses an animal costume - suitable for all ages and sizes, we think this is a real winner! And it’s also the best way to get yourself on TV if you’re attending the darts and want to be featured in the crowd shots.

From Lewes in Sussex to the Perth Bonfire, family focused events are becoming ever more popular and fancy dress is becoming a big part of the fun for many people. Especially with events like the Perth Bonfire and Fireworks, which have a historical theme, we see lots of kid’s fancy dress costumes based on history being purchased - the WWI boy’s army costume is just one example.

To get the most out of a bonfire night parade or event, it’s really important to plan your travel. In Lewes, for example, there will be no trains running that evening because the crowds last year made travel unsafe. Think ahead and where possible find somewhere to stay within walking distance of the event - camping on a friend’s front room floor just adds to the fun! Remember that crowds are big and slow moving, so you need to allow extra time to get to and from your destination.

Finally, remember that if you’re attending events after dark with children, you need to take special care to ensure you don’t get separated or that the children know what to do if you are separated. Fancy dress is fun - but it can also be really difficult to spot your loved ones in a crowd where everybody is in fancy dress costume! One clever trick is to give your little ones a handful of glowstick brackets to activate and hold over their heads if they get lost - you’re more likely to spot the glow than the child and even in a crowd you can see the light rising upwards from quite a distance away.

1. Make decorations out of household rubbish - old wine bottles with a candle in them look creepy, but make them even creepier by turning them round and painting a ghost on them with white paint and a stencil - super creepy! Clementines with zombie faces drawn on with permanent marker are a fun treat, and make good decorations, as do rubbish bag spider webs pinned up in doorways.

2. Host a halloween film night - rather than just boozing and dancing (always fun) double your fun by picking a halloween double bill like:

• Evil Dead 1 and 2
• Any two from the Halloween franchise
• A Nightmare on Elm Street - any two of the many reruns of the basic theme
• Any two from the Ghostbusters franchise (the new all female cast really opens out the fancy dress costume possibilities!)

If you invite your friends to come in those costumes you can sit and watch your films like real horror fans. We’ve got both male and female Ghostbusters costumes, including extra sized male Ghostbuster fancy dress ones which are flying off the shelves like Halloween bats this year, so it’s a good idea to order your fancy dress costume now.

3. Drink like a dream - or a nightmare!

• Rim cocktail glasses with black sugar (make it yourself with granulated sugar and black food colouring left to dry out gently in a low oven for an hour)
• Use tinned lychees and blackberries or blueberries to make amazing monster eye ice-cubes. Simply drain the lychees and stuff each one with a single blackberry or blueberry to make the pupil, then freeze. Drop one (or two) into every drink so people find their favourite tipple is giving them the eye!

Harvest hard apple cocktail

 This amazing cocktail has just three ingredients and tastes wonderful.

1. 1 litre premium cider
2. 1 tub soft scoop vanilla ice cream
3. 500 grams pumpkin puree (tinned) or bake and puree your own with a little maple syrup to sweeten.

Give the ice cream 10 minutes out of the freezer and then stir the pumpkin puree through it. Refreeze. Warm cider gently in a saucepan until gently simmering. Half fill tall glasses with cider and then a scoop of the ice-cream. Delicious boozy floats!

Anyway, as hundreds of frightened travellers fled the scene and panicked reports of an ‘active shooter’ near the baggage carousels sent armed officers swarming though the building, we have a few tips to help you not create mayhem in your costume.

Pack your fancy dress with care

Many fancy dress costumes are made of specialist fabrics that look fantastic while remaining lightweight so you can move around easily. This does mean they can be a little wrinkle-prone so we recommend folding with great care or even rolling your outfit so that you don’t have to do too much remedial work at your destination.

Hot shower for costume drama

If you do get a few creases, the good news is that they should drop out easily. Run a hot shower, hang your costume from the shower rail away from the water and leave for a couple of hours or overnight. Wrinkles should be much reduced.

Pick an impact costume

If you’re going for a Butlin’s Big Weekend fancy dress or just a family friendly costume, picking something high impact that works for the entire family is a brilliant idea. One of our favourites is the Caveman look - this works for everybody from toddlers to teens to grandparents and you get some really impressive accessories such as our crazy cavewoman wig complete with bone! Another reason this is a great choice is that we offer inflatable clubs so they take up no room in your case but make a big impression once blown up!

Yes, with our own dedicated Baywatch section, you can invite your friends to a party that will absolutely rock their worlds. Whether you opt for a sexy women’s baywatch costume, release your inner Hasselhoff or channel Pamela Anderson, all you need to make this party a real success is some water. Now - if you’ve got a pool, or a friend with a pool, you’re absolutely certain to have a huge success, but even without a swimming pool, all you need is a lawn sprinkler to make this event a winner.

Of course people will pretty soon be jumping in and out of the spray and you can even have a competition for the best Baywatch pose caught on camera.

Making your own slip’n’slide is dead easy too:

• But some plastic sheeting - often found in the paint section of DIY stores
  Roll out the plastic on the ground - try to find a slope, no matter how gradual, to help you
  Weigh it down with anything that won’t cause injuries to you or the sheeting - options include sandbags or pool noodles. The pool noodle approach is the most sensible, just buy a dozen or so from a pound store, roll the edges of the sheet around them and either velcro-strip it closed, or use a glue gun to seal it.
• Pin the top edge down with tent pegs so it doesn’t move.
• Use your lawn sprinkler or a hose set to spray and propped up to create a continuous flow of water down the slide.
• Regularly add some dirt cheap shampoo or washing up liquid to the top of the slide to create a frictionless slide.
• Jump on and have fun!

Make-up

Check your face paint is going to hold up on the day if it’s sunny. We recommend laying on a base of foundation before applying face-paint to give it a bit more staying power. If you get hot and don’t want to ruin your look, a small mister spray of cold water can refresh your face without smearing your carefully applied make-up.

Costumes

The greatest impact definitely comes from ‘onesie’ or ‘jumpsuit’ fancy dress costumes but they can be hot. To make the best of your costume, we recommend showing up in your full fancy dress - like our adult monkey costume but being prepared to strip it off and have a minimal costume underneath. For the cheeky monkey, the stripped down look could be a monkey mask, a string of plastic bananas and a monkey tail attached to a pair of shirts. Worn with a brown T-shirt this is still a great look once everybody’s taken your picture in your full monkey outfit.

Shoes

Seriously, our one biggest tip for summer costume parties is to find a barefoot or flipflop wearing character - it means you can cool your feet on the grass or dip them in the paddling pool without having to faff around taking shoes on or off. It really makes for a great party to have happy feet!

Sun

And finally, don’t neglect the sun cream just because you’re wearing fancy dress - particularly if you’re taking kids to a summer fancy dress party, remember to slap on the high sun factor sun protection and you’ll ensure they don't get sunburn to remember the party by.

Decorate like a Italian

Which means, go for it! Nothing restrained or stripped back Scandi about this event - a glitterball, some confetti, party poppers and multi-coloured pompoms for the cheerleading is just the beginning. Go kitsch, go nuts, go totally lurex … this is the one event where you cannot overdecorate.

Cook for England

Except don’t … cook or buy some food for every nation and don’t get too hung up on it. Most of the food should be snacky and you can always do booze for the nations that don’t have a great culinary heritage.

Dress for success

Give each guest a country and say they must come in national dress or dressed as a famous person of that nationality - there are 43 countries taking part so you can definitely give all your guests something to dress up in. Fancy dress costumes, like our macho matador can be bought or made but anybody who doesn’t come in costume has to wear whatever you require them too - an Australian hat with lederhosen and a string of French onions, for example!

Yes, it claimed, from now on creatures in its photos must be dressed up in costumes. The mind totally boggles at how many people fell for that one!

But with several fun events coming up, you can use your dressing up skills a couple more times this month. First is St George’s Day, 23 April, which is a big patriotic event in the UK and where there will be no end of St George’s and crusader costumes in general, on show.

If you’d like to stand out from the crowd, we have a Union Jack costume which is really stunning - the British flag always looks amazing but on a second skin outfit it emblazons itself across the body and gives a fantastic patriotic effect. For those who can’t enjoy the chance to wear such a brilliant full body outfit, we have an ‘England Hat’ which can easily be taken off when its not appropriate to be worn but which gives you a chance to enjoy the saint’s day. Either way, some great British fun such as beer drinking and maypole dancing may be equally enjoyed in either costume!

Then, just 24 hours later, the London Marathon hits the streets and you get the chance to participate, spectate or watch it on TV and cheer on your favourite runner, whether that’s an international athlete or a fancy dress costumed fun runner raising money for charity.

Dozens of celebrities will take part, and spotting them on the TV screen is part of the fun of the day for many of us who can’t actually get to London to watch the day’s events and of course one of the most amazing experiences is watching people in absolutely insane costumes somehow managing to get around the course. From rhinos to telephone boxes and from pantomime horses to dominoes, we’ve loved seeing how much effort people put into the fancy dress they wear on the day.

Starting with World Book Day - this boost to literacy and reading in our schools and our children’s bedrooms has become a fast favourite and Facebook will be full of cute kids heading off to their classes in costume from The Artful Dodger to Pippi Longstocking and there will be more Harry Potters than you can shake a Quidditch stick at!

You can extend World Book Day at home, by cooking some of the meals mentioned in favourite books - there’s actually a Moomin cookbook, a Winnie the Pooh cookbook etc, or just providing some of the top treats in children’s literature … Willie Wonka chocolate, anyone? And if you serve up the treats in your own World Book fancy dress you’ll definitely give your children a day to remember.

Easter can be a funny old festival - it’s a moveable feast, for one thing, which means it’s at a different time every year, and because it contains a couple of holiday days, it’s a good idea to get your Easter entertainment plans sorted out early. Lots of families like to make a visit to a country park, petting zoo or city farm to see the baby animals, but it can be a bit of a dodgy prospect in March, when we can get snow as well as horrible cold rain. So it’s always worth having a Plan B like watching some Easter themed films at home if the weather’s horrible - our favourites include The Dog who saved Easter and that old favourite It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown. You can always indulge in some Easter fancy dress to increase the fun.

Grown ups can feel left out over Easter so why not plan an Easter-themed evening with some darker entertainment such as Donny Darko, the demon bunny, and some chocolate themed cocktails?

While we’re all in favour of having fun in fancy dress (and not spending too much cash into the bargain!) we’ve seen some cheap fancy dress ideas causing a bit of concern in recent months. A chap called Pedro Fonseca was photographed on the Tube in London dressed as what several commuters saw as ‘a suicide bomber’ and tweeted about.

Mr Fonseca himself says he was simply dressed as a soldier, along with some colleagues who were in police fancy dress costume but that’s not how it appeared to many onlookers who saw his backpack and a ‘fake bomb’ strapped to his chest, which he denies.  British Transport Police said,'While this incident was not reported to us by anyone on the train, it is insensitive and crass behaviour in the light of recent terrorist attacks across the world and the threat to the UK currently at severe.’

So if you’re going to dress up in something edgy, maybe it’s better not to take public transport?

On the other hand, charity employee Antonio Cortes, who was dressed as Superman saved a woman from being robbed. Apparently he was eating his breakfast at a pub when a scream caused him to run outside where he saw a man with his hands around a woman's throat at a cashpoint. Mr Cortes chased the man along the street and wrestled him to the ground until assistance arrived, and the attacker is now in the custody of Gloucester police.

Our only question about this is … why was he eating his breakfast in a pub in a Man of Steel costume?

Anyway, what we’ve learned about fancy dress in February is that Superheroes trump bad guys every time - and that with Valentine’s Day, you might want to invest in being one of the good guys or girls, as that seems to bring all the benefits including, perhaps, some romance …

And if that sounds too specialist, how about the families who undertook three laps of Hampton Park Green in Salisbury in memory of Harvey Warren who died when he was just nine weeks old. The fancy dress wheelbarrow race is now in its third year and raises funds for charities relating to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. While most competitors were husband/wife or parent/child combos, one cute competitor was a little boy in Spiderman pyjamas with a toy wheelbarrow … all together now, awwww…

If you’re going to compete in fancy dress, we have some tips for you!

How to choose a fancy dress for a sporting event

1. Decide if you want to win or win applause - it’s difficult to do both! If you’re competitive then superhero costumes can be a good choice because they allow you full range of movement and aren’t too heavy or prone to over-heating.
2. Practise the necessary movements - whether you’re a giant cockroach or an Avenger, your costume is likely to change the way you move and may even impede your view. Our Shark Bite costume, for example, is a real crowd pleaser but to be able to run in it effectively you’d need to spend a bit of time practising with the fancy dress outfit to ensure that you knew where the blind spots were … that should definitely get you a lot of attention as you pound the streets in your neighbourhood!
3. Consider team costumes for maximum impact - if you’re raising money for a good cause, team costumes can generate a lot of crowd donations so make sure all your team members have a donation tin or bucket.

Some of the most brilliant costume parties we've heard about in recent years involved setting a theme that related to the event - for New Year’s Eve these include:

The turning of the year

• Time itself - anything from the crocodile with the ticking clock in Peter Pan through to sand timers, alarm clocks, Father Time with his scythe, digital wristwatch costumes … the sky is the limit here!)
• The eleventh hour (expect mad scientists and Cinderella's, but you’ll be amazed what else your friends come up with)
• The time you were born (dressing as the decade you were born into - this is a LOT of fun, especially if you have friends who don’t like admitting their true age!)

Fireworks, bells and bubbly

Lots of first footers with coal and kilts tend to show up for this one, but you’ll also have people show up in Big Ben costumes, as champagne bottles and quite a few rockets and Catherine wheels, probably.

New Year’s Resolutions

This is a fun topic for a New Year’s party and we’ve seen:

1. People in national costume for those who’ve resolved to learn a language/take a trip
2. People  dressed as cars who vow to pass their driving test this year
3. Beefcakes in muscle suits committing themselves to exercise in the year ahead
4. One chap came as a convict … his resolution was to not end up in trouble again - not sure how that worked out for him!

All these ideas add an extra sparkle to your New Year’s Eve party plans and can make your event the most talked about party of 2015, and the most talked about one of 2016 too!

We might not have the cash that Jonathan Ross has, and he certainly knows how to throw a Halloween fancy dress party, but we bet the Cheap Fancy Dress customers had just as good a time as his celebrity guests. From David Walliams to Claudia Schiffer, from Gok Wan as the scariest clown ever, through to Konnie Huq in a very un-Blue Peter costume with a hatchet through her head, we couldn’t help spotting our favourite stars.

Because we love to see a good fancy dress costume, we really browsed over the paparazzi pictures of Jonathan Ross and his guests and the one that really surprised us was Jimmy Carr! Not sure how much time he put into his preparations, but he was totally unrecognisable as Hannibal Lecter … not the way we usually think about this cuddly TV host at all!  Still, having taken a good look at his costume, we think we could have saved him a mint - our Hannibal Lecter straitjacket and mask are a snip, and look just as scary as his bespoke fancy dress costume.

Top themes for 2016 Christmas parties

One thing we’ve noticed now Halloween is over is that people are clearly planning their Christmas and New Year Fancy Dress balls already and two key themes are emerging. One is Frozen themed Fancy Dress, which is proving to be a runaway success this year, so if you’re aiming to be Anna, Elsa or Olaf, you need to get your order in early.

The other big theme this year seems to be colour themed parties - lots of ‘black and white’ balls or ‘red or dead’ parties appear to be on the cards this year, so if you’re looking for something a little different for a colour themed party, we recommend looking out for coloured contact lenses to add the final finishing touch to your party gear! If you want to be controversial (and there’s always somebody who does) and not wear the ‘right’ colour for a colour themed party, one way around it is to invest in a multicolour costume such as a rainbow or hula dancer with floral garland, that way at least part of your fancy dress will be the right shade!

And of course part of that expense is that the easy entertainment of summer is over - the weather changes, the clocks go back and kids don’t get to play around outside the way they used to. So indoor entertainment is required and that can be more expensive.  We like to help where we can, so we’ve got a couple of tips and tricks to make your money go further.

Repurpose last year’s Halloween costumes

We learned this one long ago - pack away last year’s halloween gear and use it as your decorations for this year. A few balloons to serve as ‘heads’ and some old wire coat hangers twisted together as the bodies mean that you can hang or drape last year’s costumes around the house to look like the recently hideously deceased! One of our favourite tips is to hang a costume just outside the front door with a couple of flickering tea lights to illuminate it - break a couple of glow sticks, twist them into a heart shape and sellotape them inside the chest area of the costume - as your guests approach the glowing heart of the undead will really impress them! A glow in the dark cleaver right through the heart will definitely add a creepy note.

Use Halloween fancy dress as a game

This is fun too - we’ve never giggled so much as when watching people who are already in fancy dress completing the obstacle race of dressing themselves in another fancy dress costume over the top! Lay out halloween costumes down the room, first shoes, then clothing, then hats and finally accessories. Get your contestants to line up and blow a whistle as they head to the start line.  But here’s the twist - as they try to dress, the next contestant in line is throwing a dice and as soon as they throw a six they run down the room and start to grab the clothing off the first runner so they can take over. As contestant #3 starts to throw the dice, the first one runs to the back of the queue and waits for their turn with the dice. It’s seriously good fun and the winner is the first person to get fully dressed and reach the prize, a box that they must open to reveal a scary drink that they have to then  down in one. This game works for kids or adults (with a grown up cocktail as the prize) and never fails to break the ice.

Hmmm … then (still in the USA) there’s fury over a Caitlyn Jenner costume that is being retailed by the same people who produced a Pocahottie outfit that enraged Native Americans around Halloween last year. Our view is that this company have definitely decided to make a niche for themselves by issuing controversial fancy dress outfits because it generates them a lot of publicity.

So, given that most people just want to dress up in fancy dress and have a great time, are there any costumes it’s wise to be careful about here in the UK? The only one that we’ve occasionally seen cause a few ripples in recent years is Arab Fancy Dress which has sometimes been a bit of an eyebrow raiser, especially if worn by stag parties who’ve ended up touring the pubs, but that might be as much about watching a dozen Arab men downing shots as about anything else!

Generally though, the British are pretty tolerant about any kind of fancy dress costume and just accept that people are having a good time and enjoying themselves. After all, you’ve got to laugh, haven’t you?

Of course, if you’re not a sports fan, this is all quite boring, so why not plan a party that works for the sports fan and the sports hater equally? You’ve heard of surf and turf, well at Cheap Fancy Dress we’re fans of Sport and Resort … and this is how you do it!

Send out your invitations to a fancy dress party, telling your guests that they have to come dressed as a sporting hero or a holiday-maker.

Divide your home or party space in two - in one half have outdoor bowls or cricket, some Nerf guns  with targets and other simple games so that people can compete for the prizes that will be awarded at the end of the party. A football piñata makes a brilliant competition because you can fill it with prizes and the party people in holiday costumes can cheer and jeer as the sportspeople try to smash the piñata. If you have a big screen TV, you can set it up to watch one of the sporting events so that the sports fans don’t feel they are missing out.

In the other half of you space set up parasols, an outdoor cocktail bar and a barbecue, with some catchy holiday tunes playing in the background. If you can manage a poolside party, so much the better, the sports-fans can swim while the holidaymakers spectate!

As your guests arrive, greet them appropriately - sporty types get a scorecard and an energy drink while holiday fans get a Hawaiian flower garland and a drink in a coconut. Let each side enjoy the fun, whilst making sure somebody tends the barbecue and tops up those drinks and remember to award those prizes to the best athlete in each game and the best fancy dress costume in each category.

Dress like a Frenchman - or woman. You don’t have to go crazy, but simply wearing a beret can give your evening’s view a bit more pizazz. A French moustache is an optional extra, but we highly recommend it, especially for the ladies!

Eat like a Frenchman - again, keep it simple - make some French bread pizzas by spreading pasta sauce and grated French cheese on baguette and grilling it, before scoffing it in front of the TV along with some red wine (seems to be a theme this month, doesn’t it?) and creme brûlée for pudding.  Alternatively, if you’re having people round for food and cycling, go for a crepe party, by providing lots of basic crepes and allowing people to make their own fillings, either sweet or savoury.

Invitations - to make your Tour de France viewing more fun, invite your friends around, by sending them a vintage Tour de France poster invitation. You can even set up your stationery bike in front of the TV for any crazy person who wants to get a sense of what it’s like to enter the Tour!

The problem is … how do you theme a party around space, SciFi and aliens?

We have the answer. Moon Landing Day! The first moonwalk took place on 21 July 1969 - that’s surely a good reason enough for a party.

There’s something really special about a room full of Spocks and Yodas, Terminators and Neos. It’s proper alterego fancy dress - and for men, in particular, an outer space and SciFi party allows them to really commit to the dressing up process in a way that no other theme will do. You see every single man believes he really is a Terminator, or a Predator, or at very least, Han Solo. So if you’re struggling to get the man in your life to want to dress up, this is the ideal way to persuade him to play along.

Of course, it’s slightly more difficult for women … the female costumes for outer space and SciFi are a little more limited than for men. There’s Princess Leia of course and both Ewoks and Stormtroopers are unisex but you may have to get a little more imaginative to find the costume you really desire. A viewing of Flash Gordon will get you in the mood for some eye-wateringly gorgeous female costumes including harem pant outfits while Barbarella is definitely adult face dress UK style!

Continue your theme with some ambient music, dry ice and some cocktails serve in futuristic containers. Outer space cake pops are the easiest things to make … you simply can’t go wrong because no matter how weird they look, it seems entirely intentional - as if you planned it, in fact!

Games are easy too - moonwalk contests, pin the Earth to the Solar System (guess what, you won’t even need a blindfold, we’re really bad at knowing where we live universe-wise) but the best game of all is to buy a space rocket and launch it! 

Ways to celebrate June 21

A fancy dress party is a always fun - you can invite your guests to interpret the theme any way they like, so you might find that some come as tennis players (Wimbledon) whilst others opt for that Druid and virgin theme and still others think about the Queen’s Official birthday and show up as Beefeaters. You might find some people think of exams and turn up dressed as school kids, whilst others are focused on their summer holidays. By leaving it open to your invitees to decide what they think of as ‘June Fancy Dress’ you will find all kinds of clever ideas and it’s a real ice-breaker to get your guests to explain to each other why they chose to come dressed as they did.

June party games

Maypole dancing - yes, it’s a solstice thing! Get the men to rig up a maypole and print out some instructions, then play some jolly music and see how you get on … it should be good for a laugh.

Summer bonfires

Traditionally the summer solstice was celebrated with a huge bonfire because dangerous spirits were said to roam freely at midsummer and the fire kept them away. A bonfire is a fantastic way to cook some great food too. Forget the baked potatoes and sausages and opt for some great summer bonfire feasts such as:

Baked bananas

Slice gently through the skin and drip in a little honey, butter and liqueur - bake for thirty minutes and enjoy a boozy gooey pudding but we warned, they are red hot!

Prawn skewers

Cherry tomatoes, skewered prawns and cubed pineapple make delicious zingy kebabs that cook in a trice. Make a simple marinade of oil, lime juice and chopped fresh herbs to drizzle on the cooked skewers.

Roasted corn on the cob

Buy the corns in the green (with the leaves still on) and set them on the grill. Keep turning as the leaves char. Use fireproof gloves to peel back the leaves and sprinkle the cooked corn with salt, wrap the base of each corn cob in a cloth to ensure that your guests don’t burn their hands as they gnaw the hot and char-grilled kernels off the cob.

The Celebrity Juice host welcomed Charlotte Crosby dressed as Cheryl Fernandez-dez-Versini, (still better known to us all as Cheryl Cole) and Fearne Cotton and Holly Willoughby who showed up as Edina and Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous.

Keith himself didn’t get his Wolverine costume from us, dare we say it - our claws are better! But Gino D’Acampo’s Robin costume (Batman and Robin, not red-breasted bird) looks just like ours, and there was a red-breasted bird, in the stripper that was booked for the event, but she didn’t thrill Keith as much as he’d hoped. You can google to find out why.

The great thing about fancy dress birthday parties is that you get such amazing selfies … Catwoman and Big Bird sharing a beer, a nurse and a vampire queueing for the loo, Elvis passed on out the sofa with Thor’s hammer cradled in his arms. All that stuff is such good fun, and you’ll discover things about your friends and family that you never knew. Just as Gok Wan turned up on Celebrity Juice dressed as Psy, you might find that your Uncle Eric always wanted to be a ballet dancer or your best friend’s little sister is not as shy as she pretends, when she turns up in cheerleader fancy dress!

If you’re planning a fancy dress party to celebrate a birthday, one fun way to do it is to set a theme - it might be children’s TV characters, superheroes, or sporting legends. One of our favourite recent parties, although it was pretty strange, was themed ‘ice cream flavours’ and while the jelly beans, strawberries and pantomime cows were quite predictable, even if still funny, we’re still shaking our heads at the inventiveness of the person who came dressed as raspberry ripple in a white dress wound round with a red scarf - clever and cheap!

Two big opportunities for party fun this month - there’s St George’s Day on 25th April and the London Marathon on 26th - so the whole weekend is likely to be one long celebration. We’re quietly confident that we’ve got the award for the best costume all sewn up with our very cute 118-118 costume for ladies … the chaps might be more traditional but we’re betting that our stunning T-shirt and tutu combination which comes with sexy thigh high red and white stockings will take the prize wherever a prize is to be taken! You could say it’s a front runner …

 But before we settle down to watch the athletes, St George’s Day gives us a chance to demonstrate our patriotism - St George costumes, dragon outfits, bowlers and pinstripes or whatever fancy dress costume appeals to your inner Englishman, we’ve got the components of the right costume for you, so all you need to do is bring your creativity and sense of fun and we can provide the rest!

It’s good to be aware that there is more risk of snow in April than in December (yes, that’s a fact in the UK) so if you are planning a fancy dress party, make sure you’ve got some warm food as well as chilled drinks. If you’re attending a party rather than planning one, it’s a good idea to choose a costume that allows you to add some layers if you get  cold, so for a marathon runners outfit you could carry a handy silver thermal blanket, and for St George a nice warm cloak will make sure that you don’t shiver your way through the parade or the killing of the dragon in the back garden.

Begin with St Patrick’s Day decor

Get the kids to make some garlands with green crepe paper, they can make simple paper chains and then hang shamrocks off them. If you have a little cash to spend on decoration a few green helium balloons make a big difference to the look of the room. Make a really big leprechaun hat (the easiest way to do this is to put a cardboard brim painted black around an ordinary black dustbin and then put a cardboard or crepe paper hat band around it, paint it green and add a gold buckle. Instant beer cooler! Put your beers in it with some ice and watch your guests ooh and aah at your cleverness.

Costuming for a St Patrick’s Day Party

Leprechauns are traditional, so we like to concentrate on them. Traditionally they’ve always been male but we’ve got the world’s sexiest leprechaun costumes for gorgeous girls too. It’s traditional to kiss the Blarney Stone but we reckon that at your party you’ll be the one that gets kissed, if you invest in our super-cute St Patrick’s Day outfit.

St Paddy’s Day food

Let’s not get too hung up on food. Irish stew is easy - but let’s be honest, it’s not the easiest, nor most appealing, party food. We really like simply dying everything green with food dye - green mashed potatoes, little bites of toast covered in guacamole, green-dyed cream cheese dip with crackers. Really easy, really simple and really tasty. We favour pistachio ice-cream as a sweet treat, with a little Bailey’s Irish Cream poured over it!

Music

The Pogues, U2, Thin Lizzie, Van Morrison, The Cranberries … there’s a plethora of great Irish bands to get your guests moving, and then, to calm them down, print out some Irish ballads like Danny Boy and play the instrumental version so that everybody can sing along (and cry). Then get them moving again with some Irish jigs - but make sure you’ve moved your good furniture out of the way, because it can get pretty lively once the Irish dancing starts!

Drinks

Irish coffee, Guinness, Whiskey, Cider, Bailey’s, Potcheen … there’s no limit to what you can drink on St Paddy’s Day, but be sensible.  Too much booze isn’t good for your party or your guests, so make sure people have plenty to eat - soda bread and baked potatoes are good for soaking up alcohol for example. Then, instead of letting people drink too much, keep getting them to play silly games like writing limericks or kissing the Blarney stone (a very small pebble in the middle of the floor that they have to get their lips too without falling over, so that they have a great night without a morning they’ll regret!

Other great Valentine’s Day fancy dress ideas include a convict couple - to make it really romantic you can paint both people’s initials on a ball and chain for the guy and give the convict girl a swag sack containing a velvet heart cushion or balloon with his name on.

Of course, not every costume needs a party - especially on Valentine’s Day! We know that lots of couples like fancy dress at this time of year, whether or not they’re planning to share their costume with a gang of friends or just with one special person. And why not … what can be more romantic than dressing up for the one you love? So whether you want to play at being a gangster and his moll, or doctors and nurses, we’ve got something just right for you.

Or if you prefer something a little more contemporary, why not try a Shrek and Fiona combo, or even a couple’s fancy dress from Top Gun or An Office and a Gentleman? Before you start to wonder, yes, we have both male and female costumes for those characters, so it doesn’t matter who wants to be the officer or the aviator, we’ve got the perfect fancy dress costume to make your fantasies come true.