Why have a Halloween party?
In America, Halloween is a huge spooky spectacle featuring costumes, jack-o’-lanterns, and candy. More and more people here are also becoming enthusiastic about the eerie celebration on October 31.
On this evening, you can dress up and roam the streets as a hungry zombie, refined vampire, or terrifying monster.
Together with family and friends, the ghostly fun becomes a unique experience. Leave the often-serious routine of everyday life behind and enjoy the spookiest celebration of them all.
We’ll tell you everything that belongs at a Halloween party, what you should keep in mind, and what differences there are between a spooky celebration for adults and one for children.
How to make your Halloween party a success
There’s a lot that goes into making your Halloween party a success. With good planning, you’ll be perfectly prepared
– from choosing the venue, sending invitations, and decorating to preparing the food and entertainment. Of course, the spooky costumes are the most important part. After all, they’re what turn Halloween into the ghostly celebration we know and love. That’s why you’ll find a variety of Halloween costumes and great Halloween accessories for your party at Kostümpalast.
Organizing a spooky party can be stressful. Our step-by-step guide makes preparation easy and builds anticipation for the big horror spectacular to an immeasurable level.
Plan and organize step by step
First decide how much you want to budget for the Halloween party. Everything that follows depends on this. Next, you need to clarify whether the scary party is intended for adults or children. For children, it should be more fun than frightening. If only adults are attending, it can be bloody and gruesome. A theme encourages greater creativity.
The number of guests is also important. For a small celebration with family and close friends, you can transform your home into a monster cave. For a large Halloween party, it is worth renting a venue with enough space for the costumed guests and fun activities.
The venue is set. Now you can send out the invitations and get the appropriate decorations. Think about what food you want to serve at the party and what you will need for it.
The theme provides a framework not only for the invitations and decorations, but also for the costumes and the entertainment itself. If your budget is tight, you can make many things yourself and ask family or friends to help you prepare the horror experience. Creating something together and then enjoying it to the fullest is definitely a lot of fun.
What theme for Halloween?
A cool theme is also worthwhile for Halloween. And it can be just as creative as the costumes you choose from. Whether it’s “morgue,” “haunted hotel,” “cemetery romance,” “zombie apocalypse,” “cursed clinic,” or “Halloween in Hollywood”—anything is possible.
Try a new theme every year. That way, things stay exciting for you and your guests. If you can’t decide, simply write each idea on a small piece of paper and put them in a jar. Then you or a selected person can draw the winning theme.
Design frightfully good invitations
Take care of the invitations in good time so your guests have enough time to put together a costume. Printed invitation cards that reveal the theme of the Halloween party are a great choice. The cards can also have special shapes, such as the shape of a
pumpkin or a gravestone.
Important information to include on your invitation:
- Who is hosting?
- What kind of party is it?
- What theme is planned?
- Where and on what day will the party take place?
- When does the party start?
- Other details: Are costumes required? What should guests bring? Anything else?
Spooky decorations that will scare you stiff
Halloween calls for spooky decorations
just as a vampire needs sharp teeth. They turn any room into a musty
crypt and the garden into a creepy cemetery. We have
spookily beautiful ideas ready for you that are easy to implement
and make a big impact.
Spooky Lighting Effects
With bright festive lighting, even the creepy skeleton in the corner looks harmless. Dim the lights or switch on the indirect lighting. Place candles in large candelabras and let the flickering light play with shadows and illusions. Of course, a pumpkin lantern is a must—it welcomes guests at the entrance with its gruesome face. If you want to play it safe with candles and tea lights, choose electric versions.
Creepy Critters
What would a crypt be without monstrous spider webs hanging from the chandelier and covering the walls? You can scatter the eight-legged inhabitants everywhere—in the web, next to the food, or in the bathroom on the soap.
Other popular decorative creatures include rats and bats. Whether in the tree beside the terrace or hanging from the ceiling, the little winged creatures cast eerie shadows. And in the kitchen, the rats get busy at the refrigerator.
Ghosts, Zombies, and Body Parts
Depending on the theme, there are many ways to arrange the decorations. For a ghost theme, let ghosts float through the room. If you have a cemetery theme, zombies crawling out of the ground and hands rising from the earth are ideal. In the crypt, a coffin serves as a table, and the skeleton welcomes the undead guests. Perhaps Count Dracula himself is waiting around the next corner for a tasty morsel. For a hospital theme, severed body parts, decorative knives, and plenty of blood create frightening moments.
For the ultimate scare, use animated Halloween decorations. When the skeleton head, pumpkin monster, or witch on her broom suddenly starts talking and glares at guests with a devilish look, the fright is guaranteed—an absolute hit at any spooky party.
Halloween Colors
Keep your decorations in black, red, and brown tones to enhance the eerie atmosphere. Black tablecloths, red candles and drinks, earthy-colored blankets to cover the couch—you can easily create the perfect setting for the party.
For ghost and hospital themes, you can also use white,
as bloody handprints and splatters of blood stand out especially well against it.
Songs guaranteed to give you goosebumps
Good music is part of a proper party. Dark songs
will enhance the Halloween atmosphere. If you want to have a pleasant
conversation, it’s best to play instrumental music in the background.
To lure guests onto the dance floor, you’ll find plenty of
Halloween songs—including “Thriller,” “Zombie,” and “This Is Halloween.”
Songs from movies and musicals are also suitable. Absolute classics are
the title themes from “Ghostbusters,” “The Exorcist,” and “Halloween.”
Culinary delights for horror fans
No one wants to go hungry at a party. And with a few simple tricks, you can turn ordinary foods into creepy Halloween creations. Sausages and ketchup can easily become severed
fingers—perfect for zombies and mummies. A jiggly brain made from gelatin dessert will also delight the living dead. Snacks spread with a green dip look slimy. Werewolves will devour meatballs with ketchup, while the vampires sip a Bloody Mary—and here we mean the cocktail. A red punch is always a good choice.
You can find many more hair-raising delicacy ideas online. You can also leave the catering to a professional catering company. If you have many guests, professionals can usually take some of the burden of preparing the food off your shoulders at affordable prices. You can request quotes without obligation.
Remember to have food and drinks on the table to suit different tastes:
- Meat
- Salad
- Side dishes
- Dessert
- Snacks
- Sweets
- Alcoholic & non-alcoholic drinks
- Vegetarian/Vegan
Halloween costumes for scaring ghosts
The horror spectacle is only complete with a monster-worthy costume.
It is worth thinking carefully about your costume. If the celebration takes place outdoors, it should also keep you warm. If the Halloween party is held indoors, it can be a little more revealing.
Costumes
In general, Halloween costumes should look spooky. This can be achieved in various ways. The elegant vampire strikes fear and terror with sharp fangs and blood-smeared lips. With their pale skin, open wounds, and body parts falling off, zombies chase their prey to death. With a werewolf, you not only have to worry about it covering everything in fur, but also whether it will bite. And the witch, with her warts and wicked
laughter, makes the blood run cold. If the party has a theme, use it as your guide.
At Kostümpalast, you will find numerous costumes for men and women in various sizes, so there is something for everyone. Couple and
group costumes give outfits an extra touch of charm.
Even if you are making a last-minute decision, you are sure to find a costume that we can deliver quickly.
You can also create your own costume. You do not necessarily need sewing skills to do so. Old clothes, bed sheets, and other materials can be used to design spooky costumes. Funny classics include a mummy made from toilet paper or a ghost made from a bed sheet.
Makeup and Hairstyle
Give your costume the finishing touch with makeup and a creative hairstyle. Whether it’s sugar skull makeup, latex wounds, or fake blood, your face becomes a spooky canvas. Wild zombie locks or an elegant vampire mane create the perfect frame. With a wig, your hairstyle is ready after just a few simple steps. Masks offer two advantages: The costume is quick to put on, and you can let others wonder who is hiding beneath the disguise. Some masks are even movable, making them particularly impressive.
Accessories and Weapons
The more detailed a costume is, the more convincing it looks. With a broom, hat, and cauldron, the witch appears as if she has just stepped out of a story. The resurrected Roman soldier makes a striking impression with his helmet and bloody sword. And Death himself needs his scythe to lead the living into his realm.
Fascinating extras include colored contact lenses—a small accessory with a big impact. With blood-red eyes, the vampire looks even more terrifying. White eyes make a zombie send shivers down your spine, while a witch with cat eyes can cast a spell with just one look.
If you’re hosting a Halloween party for children, your guests should expect a good mix of games, fun, and spooky thrills. The adult party guests don’t have to get bored either.
In general, you can use the same checklist for planning as you would for an adults-only party. With a few small adjustments, it can quickly become a child-friendly family celebration or a spooky children’s party.
How scary should it be?
Many children enjoy being a little scared. However, make sure that the decorations and costumes don’t look like they came from an 18-rated horror film. Decorative pumpkins with cheeky faces, spiders in their webs, bats, ghosts, and candles are suitable decorations for younger guests too. Simply leave the lifelike decorations in the cupboard for the adults-only party.
Costumes for the little ones?
Children’s costumes shouldn’t just look scary; they should also be comfortable to wear so that little ones can move around freely. It’s best to choose the perfect costume together with your children.
What time is appropriate?
Generally, the time of a Halloween party for children depends on the age of the guests. For elementary school children, the party takes place in the afternoon. The older the children are, the later the spooky celebration can extend into the evening, allowing you to use the darkness to create a ghostly atmosphere.
Tradition or party?
Since the mid-1990s, all Halloween enthusiasts have found the spooky celebration on the German party calendar. It was around this time that the trend of dressing up as frightening figures on the night before All Saints’ Day spread from America to Europe.
Scientists suspect that the origins of Halloween date back to the Celts. At the end of the harvest season, they celebrated the festival of the dead, Samhain, which was named after their lord of the dead. It was only with the spread of Christianity that the Celts adopted the Gregorian
calendar, and Samhain was given a fixed date—the 31st of October.
The festival of the dead took place on the night before All Saints’ Day and was referred to by Christians as “All Hallows Eve.”
This eventually became Halloween.
Scientists have been able to establish conclusively that Irish immigrants brought the festival to America in the 19th century. By that time, it was already linked to the legend of Jack O., who outwitted the devil and, after his death, wandered the world with a turnip lantern. Since pumpkins grew in America and were much better suited for use as lanterns, this became the Jack-O-Lantern—the famous pumpkin lantern that no Halloween party should be without.
In North America, Halloween is a major traditional celebration, much like Carnival in Germany. People who enjoy dressing up use Halloween as an opportunity to leave everyday life behind for an evening and roam through the house or streets together as
horror figures.
Critical voices come mainly from the Church. They warn against glorifying death. In addition, Halloween and Reformation Day fall on the same date. The Protestant Church is concerned that the Reformation initiated by Luther and the split
from the Catholic Church will receive little attention amid the spooky celebrations.