Haunted Mansion Costume Tips

I love sharing a fandom with other people in my family. And we all agree that we cannot get enough of anything Haunted Mansion themed! So after years of princess Halloween costume requests, I was surprised when my daughter asked for her first “scary” Halloween costume. She wanted to be Constance the bride from the Haunted Mansion – red glowing heart and all! After some planning and a few ghostly tricks, I think we came up with a Haunted Mansion costume to be proud of!

And I’m happy to report that my daughter was thrilled with every aspect of her ghost bride costume. She walked around making super serious spooky ghost faces all night. Observe the photos below. She was feeling her spooky self big time!

I hope these Haunted Mansion inspired costume tips are helpful to you. And that you have a boo-tiful Halloween!

Shop Vintage!

Although we looked all over online for a kids bride costume, we couldn’t find the right one. Either the bride dresses were super glittery and princess looking, or too gory with blood splatters that didn’t feel appropriate. We finally ended up using a real old wedding gown. You can find lots of these vintage looking wedding gowns for cheap at places like Goodwill or the Salvation Army. And to be honest, their retro outdated looks are actually a big plus for a ghost bride! The older wedding gowns fit the Haunted Mansion bride theme much better than more more modern gowns. The downside of finding your ghost bridal gown this way, is that you will likely have to sew it to fit you. Fortunately we had a sweet family friend (shout out to you Maria!) who adjusted this bridal gown to fit a much smaller frame than it was originally intended for.

For the male ghost costume, we looked for old suits and just couldn’t find the right thing. Fortunately, you can buy nearly anything on Amazon. So we bought this ghostly groom suit, and made some adjustments to it.

More on that next…

Use Fabric spray to get that eerie glow!

We wanted to give our Haunted Mansion costumes an aged look, and a ghostly blue glow. And we also wanted the two costumes to look like they were from the same world, even though they were very different materials. The perfect solution came in a can. We used mint green fabric paint to gently distress the arms of the costumes, as well as the bottom of the dress and pants. We slowly layered the color until we had a strong enough look.

I think it might be helpful to note that the same company that sells the mint color spray we used also sells a darker grey spray as well as a glow in the dark spray. The dark spray was just too dramatic for this project, but might be great if you are going for a scarier more dramatic vibe. And the glow in the dark spray did not deposit much color other than a light yellow. But we stopped using it after we tried it on a piece of sample fabric and realized it did not really glow enough to warrant the yellow color we didn’t love. But again, it might be great for another kind of ghost look!

Use an LED Light for the Haunted Mansion brides Heart!

This was the hardest part of figuring out the haunted bride costume. I looked at lots of options, but in the end I love what we came up with. We found a fairly flat round LED light disk on Amazon like this one. The colors were changable, and two were pink/red perfect for a glowing heart! My daughter wore a t-shirt under the bride dress that had a pocket square. We put the LED disk into the T-shirt pocket, and her haunted bride costume over that! The glowing disk stayed put, and was comfortable to trick or treat with. You will need to turn the LED light on before you place it in the t-shirt pocket though, as the remote control that comes with it will not work through clothing. The light even has a strobe effect that made the heart look like it was beating!

The other great thing about this light, is that I could see my daughter really clearly all Halloween night! I could pick her out of a huge group of children instantly. Who is glowing red? Oh yes! There she is!

Isn’t it great when safety meets fashion?

I hope these tips we learned from making our Haunted Mansion Costumes are helpful to you. If you dress up as a Haunted Mansion character this Halloween I would love if you would share your costume with me! Feel free to tag me on Facebook or Instagram!

And Happy Haunting this Halloween!