My Perfect Lolita Themed Halloween Party

I'm finally getting around to participating in a Lolita Blog Carnival again! This week's theme is just too perfect not to: My Perfect Lolita Themed Halloween Party. You heard that right, not just any Halloween party, but a Lolita one!

 Some classic Halloween costume themes with a Lolita masquerade take.

I think that my ideal Lolita themed Halloween party would be a masquerade, for starters. I love the idea of a Halloween party where everyone goes all out with their outfits and wears fancy masks! Honestly, I think the idea of elaborate masks is more appealing to me than dressing up in an actual costume. I can imagine getting all decked out in an over the top themed outfit with a mask to match! I find that option much more decadent than costumes alone, which is totally befitting of a Lolita themed Halloween party.

Visit my Etsy treasury of masks here!

Etsy has tons of shops selling a variety of different types of masks! From shaped leather, to lace, to metal, to more traditional masks. If you're even a little bit crafty, mask making isn't terribly hard to do yourself, especially if you're just picking up a blank mask at a craft store and decorating it yourself.

As for decorations, personally, I like my Halloweens to be very traditional: spooky decorations, black and purple and orange, cobwebs, tattered table clothes, dim lights, and dry ice. That sort of thing. Whenever I see these super posh black and white Halloween parties that, besides the liberal use of black, the only thing Halloween about them is a centerpiece of chalkboard painted pumpkins with the word "Boo" expertly written on them nestled amongst some gold twigs I can't help but feel a bit sad. Halloween is too great of a holiday to try to "posh it up", and the trend of posh Halloween parties always feels a bit sterile and bland to me. Halloween is an excuse to go all out and pretend to be a Gothic heroine trapped in a spooky castle and be a little bit nostalgic and kitch in the process, we can save our chalkboard paint and pennant garlands for any other day of the year.

Some of my favorite inspirational Halloween party pictures! I keep a whole Pinterst album of them.
1 Love Manor. 2 Martha Stewart. 3 Small Words. 4 Lil Luna. 5 Creative Outlet. 6 Martha Stewart. 7 House of Dewberry. 8 Celebrating Style. 9 Family Chic.

So what sort of traditional Halloween party decorations would I include in my perfect Lolita themed Halloween party? I would definitely aim for something very Victorian inspired and elegant, since this is just a dream we're having here, I would do up the space like a Gothic Victorian parlor, as if a group of vampires got together sometime in the 1880's and had a party that never stopped, and no one had the time to update the decor or dust the cobwebs out of the corners. Think the Addams Family house, but with touches of deep blood red velvet and brocade. Food wise, there would be lots of sweets, from the traditional caramel apples, to an array of spookily designed cakes and finger food.

I love the idea of traditional Halloween games, but let's face it, no one in fancy dress and a mask is going to want to bob for apples, so to harken to a lot of these old games, many of which involve fortune telling or lucky/unlucky aspects, I would have a fortune teller at the party. Just a gloomy little candle lit corner where guests could have their palms or cards read.

To further this fortune-telling theme, I would love to have the event of the evening be an old fashioned Victorian seance, complete with an ectoplasm spewing medium, a spirit cabinet, and a levitating table. Very theatrical, and very spooky (for those who aren't aware of just how the parlor tricks that made seances so popular work!). Something like this would be like a much more exciting, and thematically appropriate, version of a haunted house. Plus wandering around in the dark in a fancy dress and mask isn't any fun, it's much better to be scared while perched on an elegant chair.

Want to see some more dream Halloween parties? Check out these other blogs that participated in this week's Lolita Blog Carnival topic!

Lace a la Mode
Elegant Poupee
Her Lumpiness
The Cute Lifestyle
Northern Star

Suns in Our Hands