When most people are invited to a fancy dress party, their first thought is to find fancy dress shops and to hire a costume, have you ever thought of buying a costume instead?
The fancy dress market has changed you no longer have to hire fancy dress outfits to get really good costumes for your fancy dress parties.
For the same price as hiring you can purchase extremely good fancy dress outfits.
When you hire a costume you have to pay a deposit. This deposit is usually as much if not more than the costume hire. Why? well If you damage the costume the deposit is retained by the hire company and the costume hire can then costs you double the original hire charge.
When you hire a costume you will have the hassle (and the cost) of shipping the costume back to the hire company , again increasing your hire costs.
Certain parts of a costume wigs for example should not be hired for health and safety reasons. These parts of your outfits then have to be bought outright anyway.
If you buy a costume the outfit is then yours to keep. This means the outfit is actually an investment as it can be used again and shared with friends and family. We have one penguin costume that has really done the rounds and has paid for itself over and over again.
Your choice of costumes to buy increases every day with an expanding market and because of healthy competition the prices are extremely low a full outfit can lost as little as £15.
When the parties over you don't need to go to all the trouble of returning the costume, just pop it in the wardrobe for use later.
When you are wearing hired costumes you can never relax. You are always conscious that you may damage the costume. If you own the outfit outright you can enjoy yourself to the full.
Most people also assume that fancy dress hire is cheaper than buying, but this is not always the case, sure there are some fancy dress outfits for sale that are not cheap like the deluxe star wars costumes, but there are plenty of cheap fancy dress costumes that could cost you even less than costume hire.
Sure you can find fancy dress hire online options, but to date most don't offer the huge selection of costumes that you can find when you buy. What has to be one of the main disadvantages of hiring costumes especially online is that you can never be sure what condition your costume will arrive in, buying a costume has to be the better deal because it arrives brand new, in the box.
If you are also planning on hosting a costume party, and are looking for some ideas for fancy dress themes, browsing an online fancy dress shop is a great place to quickly get loads of fancy dress ideas.
And for me here is the final nail in the coffin for costume hire, if you decide that you don't want to wear the costume again, you could always sell it on a web site like Ebay after the fancy dress party, who knows your brand new Darth Vadar or Robin Hood may end up costing you nothing!