Somebody yells "costume contest!" over the music at nine forty. Half the room does not hear it. The other half drifts toward the front, stands in a clump, and waits while three people argue about who is judging. Twenty minutes later one person has a ribbon and everybody else has quietly gone back to the snack table.
A Halloween costume contest is one of the easiest parts of a party to run well and one of the most commonly botched, almost entirely because of sequencing. The prizes are the simple part.
Build categories so more people win
One winner out of sixty guests means fifty nine people lost. Five or six categories changes the whole feel of the night, and award ribbons come by the package or by the case of six, so covering them all is one more line on the order.
The standard spread works: Scariest, Funniest, Cutest, Prettiest, and Best Costume for the overall. Halloween award ribbons are printed for each of those, all cut at 2 by 8 inches, so a lineup of winners photographs uniformly instead of looking like you grabbed whatever was left in the aisle. Scariest Costume comes in black and gold, Funniest in orange, Cutest in black, Prettiest in orange, and the Best Costume 1st Place ribbon in black and yellow.
Add Super Costume (black and red) as your escape hatch. It is vague enough to hand to anybody, which matters when two judges deadlock or when somebody clearly put in six weeks of work in a category you did not create.
Categories nobody thinks of but should: Best Group, Best Homemade, and Most Committed To The Bit. Group awards in particular pull in the people who came as a set and would otherwise split their votes.
Pick judges, not an applause meter
Crowd voting by applause is the worst way to run this and it is the most common. It measures how many friends somebody brought, not the costume, and it puts shy people in front of a room to be evaluated by volume. Open ballot voting has the same problem with extra steps and a counting delay.
Three judges, decided in advance, works. Give them the category list on paper before the party so they are watching all night instead of scrambling. Tell them one costume gets one award, which prevents the same person from sweeping and keeps the ribbons spread out.
Stage the costume contest so it takes ten minutes
Announce the time twice, once when people arrive and once about fifteen minutes before. Then run it fast.
- Pick a spot with a backdrop or a decorated wall behind it, and a clear path in and out. People need somewhere to walk to and somewhere to go afterward.
- Run entrants past in small groups rather than one at a time. Nobody wants to stand alone in front of a room.
- Have the ribbons already sorted by category and laid out in order, face up. Fumbling through a pile on stage is what turns ten minutes into twenty five.
- Announce the category first, then the winner, then let the applause happen before you move on.
Halloween Costume Buttons, 2 inches across and four to a package (48 to a case), work well as an everybody-gets-one handout at kid-heavy events. Vintage Halloween buttons in skull, cat, and witch designs do the same job for adults who will not wear a ribbon.
Give the top prize some weight
A ribbon is right for the category awards. For the overall winner, a trophy changes behavior noticeably, because people plan costumes differently when they know a real object is on the table.
The Halloween Best Costume Trophy stands 6 inches tall with a full-color 3-D design. The Scariest and Funniest trophies are the same 6-inch height in polystone resin, which has actual heft in the hand and photographs better than a certificate ever will. Announce that the trophy exists early in the evening, ideally when people arrive. That single line at the door does more for costume effort than anything you can put in the invitation.
Then take the photo. Winners holding hardware, all of them together, before anybody takes the ribbon off. That picture is what gets people to enter next year.
Award ribbons, trophies, and buttons are in the Halloween party accessories collection, and there is plenty more for the rest of the night under Halloween party supplies. Order ribbons by the case if you are running more than three categories, since spares cover the ties.
If you have not ordered from us before, PARTY10 at checkout takes 10% off that first order. Put it toward the spare ribbons, because there are always more categories than you planned for.
