Shady Travels: Live, Explore, Learn: What to Wear for a Fancy Dress Party?

I've been to a few dress up parties.

Geeks and jocks
Superheroes and villains
School spirit
Red carpet
London Tube map
Christmas in July

This past week, Dave and I were invited to another fancy dress party, but it wasn't just any costume party. It was a 'goodies and baddies' party. This theme was a great idea, but there seemed to be so many options for costumes. We thought about going as a cop and robber, but that was too obvious. We thought objects like carrot sticks and candy, but that was too boring. I even thought about being Osama Bin Laden, but that was too involved and I'd get really hot in a bar with all the fake facial hair. Dave had the idea of being a priest with a little boy, but that just seemed too wrong.

We had dinner reservations at 7pm the night of the party. We decided to look for costumes at 5pm. We went to the $2 store in Kings Cross, but nothing was clicking. We dug through old Halloween costumes and even sexy Santa outfits.

We went over to the LGBT area of Sydney - Oxford Street to look for costumes. If there was a section of Sydney to find a costume in July, it would be here. We went to every costume shop we could find, but still nothing clicked. This was a dress up party and we were gonna make a statement.

Deflated and seeing the time tick closer to 7pm, we decided to visit the first $2 store we had been to. On our walk, Dave turned to me with a brilliant and relevant idea - the black swan and white swan of the Oscar hit Black Swan!

We searched through every corner of the $2 store and found a sexy Santa outfit that had a tutu attached. Not sure why a sexy Santa would have a tutu, but it was exactly what we needed. We bought black hair die spray and headed for the counter.

With the last two sexy Santa outfits in the store in hand we decided to bargain at the counter. We made our case stating they were the last ones, Christmas was far away and even Christmas in July was over. They wouldn't budge. In the end, we got the equivalent of the spray die for free.

We rushed home and spray painted one of the tutus, Google Images the movie posters and set out the right shades of makeup.

After dinner, we hurried home and got dressed in 30 minutes. On our way to Kings Cross Hotel, we passed by a group of eight gay guys who immediately hooped and hollered at us yelling 'The Opera House is that way!' So flattering to be cat called by gay guys.

We arrived to find an entire floor of some of the most inventive costumes I've ever seen. The birthday girl was the Queen of Hearts. Other friends were Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, sexy pink Marshall, black angel, Mario and Luigi.

The biggest shocker was there was actually another Black Swan! Dave's version was still much more impressive. I'm so proud of him for thinking of the costume and pulling it off. He got three butt pinches that night! Poor guy though - he had to go to the men's restroom in his costume. Awkward experience at the urinal indeed.

Can't wait for our next costume party. What's your favourite theme?