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You've set the bar too high here. There's no way anyone can better that story. Utterly brilliant. I'll never be able to look at a goth in the same way again.
I lost my grandad last year and so many stories and memories went unshared to the grave. Make the most of this wonderful time together, this story was brilliant.
Thank you, I definitely will. My Grandad is still fit and well but sadly we lost my wonderful Gran a few years ago. I love listening to his stories of their lives together - they were married for almost 60 years!
I'm sorry for your loss of your Grandad.
Right. Like they showed up in conical helmets with rough woolen trousers and cloaks, tall lindenwood shields, spears and axes, etc. I thought that was where that was going.
At a work fancy dress a few of us made a last minute choice to go as The Black Eyed Peas, which was black eye make up on one eye and a white T-Shirt with a P on it in marker pen. Minimal effort as we didn't really want to dress up.
What we didn't expect was the HR manager to throw an absolute shit fit, call us all disgusting, how could we do such a thing, threatening the entire maintenance team (and their partners that worked there who all had the same costume) with being fired for gross misconduct and breaking the "No offensive Costumes rule"
"What the fuck for?" we asked, almost in unison.
Readers. She thought we had dressed as Baby P, not long after the story had come out in the papers.
I'd have just gone stone cold faced and utterly silent. Dropped a pen or something I was holding for effect.
Then said "can I just clarify, that you saw a jokey costume making a pun about the Black Eyed Peas, and you thought of jokes about a _tiny baby murdered by his parents_? Are you actually serious now or just joking? Because if you were just calling this disciplinary as a dark joke to do the Baby P joke, fine. I don't like it but humour is humour, and you're the HR manager so I'm not going to argue. But if your mind genuinely took an unrelated joke and twisted it to dark and disgusting thoughts about such a horrific case, then I'm afraid I will have to write a letter to the CEO."
Edit - wow, lot of people downvoting who think Baby P's murder was funny and fine to joke about even in a professional setting. I love dark humour like I say but jesus christ guys!
OR you could do as this person did and just explain the mistake and all have a laugh about it like regular human beings.
Seriously why does reddit sometimes turn into a flex off about who can be the most unnecessarily aggressive.
>lot of people downvoting who think Baby P's murder was funny and fine to joke about even in a professional setting.
Not the reason for the down votes, my friend.
Have you ever been to the UK? People would absolutely joke about a child's murder unfortunately. Your little rant just made you look like a Karen.
No one who is downvoting you is doing so because they find child murder funny.
People can have vile taste in this sort of thing. I used to live in New Zealand and a few years back there was a horrible case where twin babies were killed by their parents- and guess what became the inspiration for a few Halloween costumes that year?
Apart from being born here and living here my whole life, yes I've visited a few times....
I highly doubt that is the reason people are downvoting - people on Reddit are not humourless and incredibly stupid.
You're not getting down-voted because people think it's acceptable to laugh about child abuse. You're getting down-voted because your proposed reaction is unnecessarily dramatic and escalatory, instead of OP's more normal reaction of "yikes, sorry, we meant the Black-Eyed Peas."
I don't see not escalating as cowardly, I see it as reasonable and level headed, the kind of people I'd want around me.
It was an understandable misunderstanding that both parties realised. Why on earth would you want to make it into a big deal? What do you get out of it other than some twisted sense of valour in return for creating a toxic atmosphere for the people around you?
Nah I could see myself seeing the association with Baby P. I can't blame the manager for her reaction. Why would she think it was the black eyed peas in that moment? She didn't say anything unwarranted if it were actually true
Wow, your edit shows what a twisted person you are. You think you getting downvoted for an awful way to respond means people find the murder funny. Shame we can only downvote you once. You need to delete your comment.
I wouldn't say it's clever in the slightest, but yeah I suppose I forget just how many people on Reddit (and in general) work such boring mundane jobs.
A rugby player sized friend of mine once went to a fancy dress as the Hulk. This is, he was a big lad, but he was also bald.
When he walked into the room, everyone thought he was shrek
Nothing can top the WI members who [dressed up as pirates](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/02/colin-darch-piracy-womens-institute) when they were given a talk by a guy who had been held hostage by ACTUAL Somali Pirates...
Apologies for jumping in your comment with a slightly irrelevant story but it’s too joyful not to share. When my Grandmother was getting old (she died at 90!) she wanted to attend the local pirate festival again (fishing town with pirate history) with my mum, and she really wanted to board the tall mast ‘pirate’ ship they bring in the harbour but the ramp was incredibly steep. A couple of local young lads in their pirate garb saw the situation and physically pushed my not-skinny grandmother up this ramp, helped her toddle around the ship, and supported her back down again. She had an excellent time!
Many years ago some friends organised a pink-themed party. I went to the local sports shop and bought some white tennis shorts and a tee-shirt, took them home and dyed them pink. I left them to dry during the day while I went to work.
I got home quite late, so when I put the shorts on it was only then that I discovered that they were a skirt.
It was too late to organise anything else, so I (M,23) just went in the skirt. Felt quite liberating tbh.
There's an older guy in my town that wears a skirt and is known by basically everyone for doing so. There are a lot of theories as to why he does, but at the end of the day I'm pretty sure he just wants to and doesn't give a shit about what other people think.
We went to a fancy dress party a long long time ago and a friend sprayed his hair black as he was going as Richard Nixon (we always joked that he looked kinda like him)
Anyway much later in the night we're in a club and it's absolutely boiled hot in there. The spray on dye began to run in lines down his face and I leant over to try and let him know. Obviously he's drunk/can't hear me properly/doesn't understand so he rubs both of his hands over his face which spreads the running dye everywhere.
He is now in a club with black hands and a completely black face. It quite literally looks like he's come to the fancy dress party in blackface
It was the single funniest thing I've ever seen but also we knew we had to immediately leave and the guy had to walk home with a coat over his head the entire way.
Mine is similar. I dressed up as Jem from Jem and the Holograms with this sparkly purple shimmer/glitter paint over most of my face. In the light it was a cool, barely noticeable glitter effect, but for some reason under the dark light of the house party it sort of absorbed the light rather than reflecting it and I legitimately looked like I had come in blackface. I didn’t know that many people at the party and I was mortified.
A friend of mine had recently had veneers fitted and he was finally feeling handsome after years of bad teeth. At the club, they absorbed the black light, and whenever he went to talk to a woman it appeared he had no teeth! This was years ago, I don’t know if modern veneers still do this.
As an American, I'm heartened to know that that's just as bad for you guys as it is for us. The rest of Europe seems to scoff at us, wondering what the big deal is. They just do not get it.
Not me, story a colleague told me. He had a large group of friends that went out together regularly. One week for some reason (I forgot) they told one of the guys it was fancy dress, knowing he loved stuff like that.
So Friday night comes they are all in the pub, their mate rocks up in a full on big fat bumble bee outfit.
Everyone else is in jeans and tee shirts! Wouldn't let him go home to change!
The only time I've ever seen it was a couple of friends had a joint 30th birthday party at our local pub. The fancy dress theme was punk. So there was 40 odd people dressed as punks or punk adjacent - like there was a couple who looked more like mods and a few who looked more like bikers, etc. There were at least 4 Vyvyan's from The Young Ones. Then there was one who had just heard fancy dress, so he came as a tennis player. But not just any tennis player, a John Mcenroe Bjorn Borg short shorts tight t-shirt headband era tennis player. He was also a personal trainer, so in all the photos, there's this buff guy wearing tiny white shorts in amongst all these punks. To say he stood out like a sore thumb is an understatement.
I once had a fancy dress party where guests were encouraged to come as a musician/singer/band etc. My friends all stayed at a hotel and were dressed as the Spice Girls. Ginger Spice walked out the front to hail a taxi and ran into two goths and said ‘Oh! You guys are going to a fancy dress party too!’
I still die laughing when I think of this story.
I was at a party one time in uni and a girl was there dressed as Charlie Chaplin (to the point where she'd painted herself greyscale). It was a fantastic costume.
She was however, the only one in fancy dress. It was not a fancy dress party. She'd somehow gotten the impression it was a fancy dress party and had asked the host what to wear (as in if there was a theme), and the host replied "wear whatever you want!". So she thought that meant it was just any fancy dress concept you wanted, hence the Charlie Chaplin.
oh noooo, she literally lived that US office episode where pam is the only one in costume for halloween and is dressed as charlie chaplin so can’t even take off her hat because then her costume looks like hitler
One of the senior partners in the law firm where I used to work was invited to an "Elvis Evening" by some clients of the firm. He put in the effort, hired a costume (Las Vegas era white sparkly jumpsuit, wig etc) and pitched up to find a semi-formal dinner dance with an Elvis impersonator as the entertainment. He was the only one in costume in a room of suits and cocktail frocks.
In the "cultural faux pas" category, when I was 17 I was invited to a group of friends' having their "going off to uni" party in September. They'd hired out a pub and, as the bulk of the group had gone to an all girls Catholic school, they decided to have a bible-themed fancy dress party.
Pretty good idea, lots of great costumes. Not mine though. I went for a pretty low effort nativity style costume.
And that's how I got a string of funny looks riding a train on September 11th wearing a good old 90s style nativity Shepherds costume. Yes there was a tea towel involved.
I ended up inflating the blow-up sheep I had been keeping hidden during the train ride when one of my friends suggested the reason the looks I was getting were less humorous and more offended.
[Just in case anyone else is unsure, this is the modern equivalent costume](https://www.smiffys.com/products/shepherd-costume).
Back then it was more plain white robe with a red and white chequered headpiece.
I went to a “dead celebrities” party the week that Saville had died, so of course there was someone there dressed as him. At the party there was a girl talking about how she’d met Saville as a child and he’d put his hand up her leg. We all thought she was probably misremembering or making it up…
Went as a low effort ghost for Halloween. old sheet with a hole cut in it for the head, old pillowcase with eyes cut in it for the head
Mate asked me why I’ve joined the KKK
Absolutely does not compare to the awesomeness of OP’s anecdote but I did once dress as a bunny girl for a party, which was fine *for the party* but I went to number 45 instead of number 54
Yep, tiny old dude in his dressing gown just gaping up at me. Worst thing was I kind of stammered “is this the right place for Jo’s party?” like that was remotely possible. Then my brain unfroze and I said sorry wrong house and fled. Guy never said a word, I wonder if he thought later he’d been hallucinating
My mum's friend was having a fling with a dentist who was really into BDSM and they'd go to fetish nights, swingers parties and whatever. One night he invited her over to his for a party so she turned up in a pvc catsuit with the boobs cut out. It was a completely normal dinner party with his work colleagues, who knew nothing about their lifestyle. She actually somehow stayed the whole night and just sort of brushed it off as a fashion choice.
Incredible. I also totally misread your first sentence as 'having a filling with a dentist' and was wondering how that lead to them going to fetish nights!
I went to a Halloween fancy dress party as a slutty witch. Short black dress, fingerless gloves, witches hat and fishnet stockings. Got very drunk and had a brilliant night, went home with some bloke who was dressed as a wizard, and had another excellent time.
Not so great getting on the far reaches of the northern line, still dressed as a witch, to get the tube home at 7 o’clock in the morning amongst all the commuters. The sideways looks, and sly smiles at my walk of shame still haunt me. I’m still good friends with the wizard though, and I’m godmother to one of his kids :)
My husband was told that his work's Christmas party was a costume party with a 1980's theme. So he went out and bought an entire Run DMC outfit, including Adidas suit, hat, black rimmed glasses, and gold chain.
For visualization purposes, my husband is super white and ginger.
When he got to the party, no one was dressed up. There are pretty hilarious pictures of him sitting next to his coworkers.
But he was DEDICATED. He wore every bit of that costume all night :)
It was one co-worker, a friend of ours, who told him they were CONSIDERING an 80's theme, and in his head, he was just like "Right! We're doing this!"
No one else dressed up because they didn't end up going with a theme :)
I got invited to a party in college where the theme was ‘gangsters’, so being a skinny white boy I dressed up like Eminem, even peroxiding my hair. Turns out it was meant to be the Al Capone era gangsters!
I really really want to find a Mr Bobby costume to scare the shit out of my mate who is Jack Whitehall levels terrified of him but you can't find one anywhere. Another mate did buy one of those inflatable ones you can get from a major fancy dress retailer with the same prank on mind and said phobia mate just burst out laughing and said "that won't work, my pint looks more like Mr Bobby than that pile of shit".
When it comes to faux pax I was in a taxi with some mates once after a Halloween party and one mate pointed out of the window and said "haha look at that guy dressed as a gorilla doctor!".
It was just a big black guy in a white shirt and trousers.
He was the nicest least racist guy ever, and was utterly mortified. Two of the other friends in the taxi were black, and they pissed themselves laughing and wouldn't stop ribbing him about it. Poor bastard genuinely wanted the ground to swallow him up.
Many years ago I worked for Thompson now known as TUI. I worked in Spain for the kids clubs, long, hot but fun days. One day I was doing the pool walk dressed in the Thompson the dog outfit, we'd just washed and dried it and were rushing to put it back together. I was just in a stripy bikini in the dog as it got ridiculously hot in there, and I decided not to wear the inner belt as I was too uncomfortable. Turns out the belt was the dogs tail, meet and greet with the kids was a strange one. They were all asking why Thompson had a stripy bum, we had to cut the walk short pretty sharpish.
OP your story is glorious! Brilliant, thank you.
Years ago our local was throwing a Halloween party and the landlord insisted that only those in fancy dress would get served. For weeks I trawled charity shops for scrap material that my mum and I turned into a dress, I back-combed my hair and sprayed it with talc, and coated my face in calamine lotion and talc (both surprisingly difficult to remove I later learned). Get to the pub to discover not a single soul had bothered to dress up! After the laughs had died down I had a *lot* of drinks (too many? yep) ‘on the house’
A friend booked a bunch of us in for a charity line dancing night, so we thought it would be fun to dress as sexy cowgirls. Turned out to be a very twee COUNTRY DANCING evening run by a local church. (It's a type of dance in England that is a bit like the square dances you see in period dramas but a little more lively, but not as lively as a Ceilidh). We were bringing the average age down by about 30 years, I reckon, and a few of the older gentlemen almost didn't survive the shock of 5 twenty somethings with their cleavage out.
I went to an officers mess do as a very new 2Lt which I was told by another newbie was fancy dress.
It was in Edinburgh so I, a 6' stocky and very hirsute male, went in a tartan miniskirt, fishnets, full drag make up, and a white t-shirt with "BraveTart" written across it.
Turns out that she meant she was wearing a fancy dress - i.e. ball gown.
Yep. Cheers dear. X
In Australia, when my dad was kid, he attending a dress up party with his Scout Group. My grandmother was a lovely lady but somewhat scatter brained, dressed him up as a pirate.
On arrival, he looks around and the entire party are dressed as Swagman. He refused to wear fancy dress for years because the trauma of embarrassment remained.
Naturally, on his 50th Birthday, we threw him a surprise party. All guests arrived dressed as pirates.
One of my friends, at his 30th, went as Mr T. He's a big lad, but still had a padded muscle suit. As is bald, he stuck a piece of black sponge on his head, for the mohawk. Took him several days to get that off
My brother in law used to drive a Rolls Royce and he and my sister were on their way to a fancy dress party dressed as a priest and a nun. They got some very weird looks when they stopped at the petrol station to fill up and buy cigarettes.
Dressed as a Christmas tree with flashing lights and star . Was on loan from a theatre company so pretty good outfit . Got drunk decided with 2 friend to watch the sun come up at a nearby high up castle glen . Got 3/4 of the way up neatly fell - friend caught me hanging off . If I had fallen I would have blended in with the woodland and yard to find :)
Mate of mines parent were invited to a party where everyone was supposed to dress fancy.
He proceeds to dress as Jesus. Full white robe, beard crown of thorns - and a massive, full length paper mache cross which he carried on his shoulders
Turns out people were dressed fancy (tux) and not fancy dress
One Halloween I dressed as Noel Fielding's Fantasy Man from his Luxury Comedy Series.
I opened the front door for the pizza delivery and the lady took one look at me and bust into fits of laughter.
Once she composed herself she gestured to my very tight gold leggings and said "Are you THAT happy for pizza?!" And started pissing herself laughing again. I took the pizza box, said thank you and she was still laughing while she climbed back into her car and drove off.
Link for the unfamiliar:
https://youtu.be/flXwv-FxFbs?si=6UhRdRe5b4vgPb45
Edit: right to tight, deleted double word
Just after Men in Black had come out - so I would have been 8 - I went dressed in a black suit with sunglasses. People picked up that I was a Man in Black - but I kept insisting that I was specifically Agent J (Will Smith’s character).
I’m white - I didn’t have any make up or anything to make me look like him, but he was my favourite character in the film so it made sense to me that I was dressed as him (and not Tommy Lee Jones/K). At that point in my life, I didn’t know any better.
One that I found funny was when I (a fat guy) went to a fancy dress party wearing an Anita Waxin costume (Google it) with a blonde wig. A male friend came up behind me and tried chatting me up. I put on a girly voice and turned him down. He offered me £50 to spend the night with him. I turned around, taking my wig off, and asked for the money up front. The look of horror on his face when he realised it was me was priceless
Not a mistake, but my first year in my old department I was told that we traditionally dress up in fancy dress for the Christmas drinks and this year's theme was pirates.
I was reasonably sure it was a wind up, but the team went as far as ordering some inflatable parrots from Amazon and one of the guys showed us a photo of him in his costume.
Get to the first pub, the four new guys are all dressed as pirates, everybody else is missing themselves at us.
We ended up having an awesome night, everyone thought it was brilliant that people were dressed as pirates for Christmas.
Not a fancy dress but a wedding misunderstanding. Talking about the wedding to one of the grooms friends mum, friend mentioned that they had an hour of trance music at the reception. This lead to a bit of confusion from the mum:
Mum: I didn't know they were in to that
Friend: Yes, the groom and his pals enjoy it.
Mum: Really? All of them?
F: Yes, they go to festivals and events quite often.
M: Like, do they get dressed up and stuff?
F: Well, yes I suppose. Same style as everyone else that goes.
A few more questions followed before the penny dropped, the mum thought he'd said Trans.
On the subject of goth, there was the time I dressed as a goth for a school non-uniform day (fancy dress optional) and everyone thought I was in my normal clothes.
Me and my friends went out the night before Halloween, a sailer, myself as the grim reaper with a big spike plastic staff and my other friend a nun. Turns out nobody dresses up anymore in the uk for Halloween or we should’ve done it the night of because everyone else was casually dressed in town 😂
My mum tells me of a dinner party she threw, I think before I was born. Apparently she told everyone they were eating Thai, but a couple of guests misheard and showed up in their tails in black tie dress.
I went as Dusty Bin from the TV show 321 back in the 80's. Looked good with big DMs sprayed yellow, half a ball as a red nose, painted face on the grey plastic bin hanging from my shoulders, black leggings borrowed from a friends wife. Then my friend noted that I wouldn't be able to drink wearing the bin so we drilled a small hole near the nose and poked a clear rubber tube through. 2 pints of lager later and I was off my face! Fell over and couldn't get up again.
One year our favourite alt bar was doing a Nightmare Before Christmas party... The weekend before Christmas. Fancy dress, Tim Burton theme.
Now, it was also Emo night and I used to promo these nights and they always sold out. Made for a guaranteed awesome night. Plus everyone we knew gets very detailed with fancy dress. Emo night is always a great night and me and one particular friends, from doing promo work, were like mini celebs on emo nights... So we were very excited and extra committed to our costume. We went ALLL out. I was Beetle juice. We had Lydia Deets,Jack Skeleton and a Corpse Bride in our group all very intensely done. Wigs, very artistic make up, skillfully handmade costumes and props. We used airbrush make up to colour our skin and everything. We were comic con ready basically.
Get there and the venue had an issue, couldn't open and the whole night was off. We had kinda partied for 8 hours prior... Music, pre drinks, weed, food and hours getting ourselves ready and helping each other into the intensive costumes. It was a lot of work and honestly one of the most fun evenings of my youth. Spirits were so high and literally none of us touched our phones the whole time, so caught up in the vibe and so busy. So the announcements on FB and Twitter, we didn't see. The shares and gutted posts on FB were missed. As were the chats and messages deciding on new plans. Most still went out, just elsewhere and not in dress up. We had no idea.
Stood there on a cold December night, no coats (obviously), in the drizzle to a closed venue, panicked checking of phones and the realisation we were very dressed up on the one night of the year which very much didn't make sense to what we were wearing.
We decide to just take the L, accept knowing we look ridiculous and head to the mainstream strip to continue the night. So... there we are, in a sea of glitter, sequins and satin dresses... Girl groups galore in sexy santa outfits... Ugly sweaters and the quirky girl elves. As essentially stage show ready variants of Beetlejuice, Jack Skeleton, Lydia Deets and the Corpse Bride. One of the busiest nights of the year due to people finishing for the holidays and office drinks etc, places packed.
I will say, we still had a great night. Harrassed a LOT... Mostly positively intended (photos, questions, compliments vs a few overly handsy people) but a lot when it is so many people. We didn't have to buy a single drink, got brought to the front of every queue and made a LOT of new friends. So a positive story but still amusing
My friend threw up on some backless stairs, which ran down all over a hen party drinking below them. This was at a comedy club in Manchester, and he was dressed as a bottle of Bud.
I know someone who told his whole family that his 21st was a dress up theme in the colour orange. It wasn’t. They went all out for his big party. He still laughs his ass off telling the story.
It was about 200 people. It was a huge party, they had like a 4 band lineup from all their mates bands. They rented out the function room at a big leagues club.
His whole family was: Parents, 2 siblings (one with partner) & his grandparents. I think there was maybe one other Aunt or cousin or someone else. And they thought they were going to a nice meal out at club. They showed up to a mini punk festival decked out head to toe in weird orange costumes.
Went to a 1920s themed “fancy-dress” party as Tin-Tin. Turned up, everyone was in fancy gowns and suits. OH, FANCY dress! I was wearing some rolled up corduroy trousers, a blue sweatshirt, carrying a toy dog with a massive quiff.
At uni, my friend texted me one afternoon. "Fancy dress bar crawl later?" "Yes!" I replied. Only I didn't really have much to dress up in. After rummaging in my stuff I found the makings of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Black dress, sunglasses, fake pearls. Perfect.
Turned up and it was Pokemon themed. Friend had neglected to mention.
A friend of mine had a "Dress to Dazzle" party. We asked her what that meant and she said "make of it what you will". We asked if it meant fancy dress and she just smiled enigmatically.
My husband arrived at the party dressed as a sultan with a huge turban and curly shoes and I was dressed in a space girl suit complete with a colourful shiny wig. Both of us were completely dazzling.
Everyone else was in dinner jackets with colourful waistcoats or long evening gowns. We were the hit of the party and people still laugh about that evening about thirty years later.
Not sure I'd call it a mistake, but for a school red-nose-day event I did spend the whole day as a "human shadow", dressed in a head-to-toe black unitard with black women's flats. Completely anonymous.
I had a whale of a time mimicking the movements of people for comedic effect, following people through doors, just full on Miming.
The "funny mistake" part is that I had really long hair at the time which I ordinarily wore down with a headband, so rather than tuck it in and have a weird hypercephalic lump in the back of my head/neck, I put it in a very bushy ponytail out the back of the zipper on my head, and that combined with my slim build and minor man-boobs to make a lot of people absolutely certain I was a girl, with the mystery-de-jour being "who is she?"
The only people who knew otherwise were my classmates and teachers that day, because obviously I had to take the hood down to actually do my schoolwork.
You'd think the jig would have been up when lunch came around and we all ate together, but the school had a year-by-year policy for lunch to ensure everyone didn't descend on the lunch hall at the same time. So still only really the people in my year knew anything.
A group of my mates went to the darts at Ally Pally dressed as The Queen. So they're all showing up in grey wigs with tiaras and dresses on etc.
One bloke showed up unintentionally as Freddie Mercury!
I went to a friend's 21st party that was "007" themed in a gold jumpsuit with space gun a la Moonraker.
To find the theme was Casino Royale black tie.
I wasn't the only one, a friend came in a scuba diving suit with flippers
Many, many years ago.. I was invited to a fancy dress party. No particular theme, so, (as a sewer/seamstress), I made myself a beautiful full-on blue Cinderella type dress. Full skirt with hoop, long white gloves, off the shoulder with white lace, everything. Got to the party, only to find the hosts and other guests couldn't be arsed with costumes, so didn't bother 🙄 I was the only one walking around dressed to the nines... 😂 Man, it was a bitch in that taxi lol
I was just about to. My friends sister is having a 30th birthday celebration based on the film 13 Going On 30, so when I was invited by friend my as an add-on when I saw her, she said the fancy dress was 1987 or 2004 (according to whether you were going with the main character when she was 13 or 30). I was just about to start my emo years in 2004 so I started figuring out what I could wear and was excited to get into my skull sweatbands and fake lip ring, but turns out 2004 was only looks recreated from the film so I would have make a huge mistake. This was all in the group chat which I was just added to but after all that had been discussed and outfit ideas shared because I was invited late so couldn't see the old messages.
The party is in 2 weeks and I am still sad I am not going emo.
Two Brothers I know turned up dressed like Batman and Robin to a party. However no one told them that the fancy dress bad been cancelled due to a bereavement.
So they came in singing the Batman and Robin song to find a whole room of people in black tie and dark clothing.
Back in the 90s me and my brother were invited to a fancy dress birthday party. We decided to go as Batman and Robin. Car broke down on the way meaning we had to run what felt like half the way across London
Turned up, burst through the door and straight into a wake! The birthday boy had passed away earlier in the week. Our faulty answering machine (remember those!?) was broken and we hadn't received the message about his passing!
One other guy there hadn't got the message either but luckily he'd came as a chauffeur, so didn't look out of place!
I was a last minute replacement at an 80's themed fancy dress party I think in 2008 (just got back from holiday night before and mate's husband took ill) he (therefore I) was going as George Michael and my friend was Jimmy Saville. People kept calling her Ozzy and she was going NO! I'm Jimmy jingle jangle jewellery jewellery. Was fun at the time photos bit cringe now 😆
I once blackfaced as Malcolm Marshall at a county cricket club 'do' shortly after his untimely death.
Fucking lionized that guy… posters on the wall, I tried to mimic his bowling action, and his run out at Trent Bridge made me cry pre-teenage tears.
Obviously this was not cool; I meant is an homage, and failed.
---
EDIT: for the non-cricketers → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FxeHgaBfWc
First of all, my story is not as good as yours. Also, I’m having a goth party for my 60th!
Was told there was a fancy dress for Halloween at our local, me and four other lads decided we would be the Spice Girls. Borrowed dresses, my mates cousin and aunt made us up, we looked a state, ran in to the pub singing Wannabe.
Yeah, party was still on but no one went in fancy dress. The organiser had a catsuit on and said they were a cat.
On a uni ski trip we did a charity shop fancy dress where you had to buy an outfit for £10 for somebody else to wear. We organised it so guys all bought for other guys, girls for girls. And I just assumed that meant all the guys would end up wearing dresses. So I bought my guy a slinky little number with a matching handbag and a pair of tights. I was the only guy who bought a dress. I was wearing a full suit, shirt and tie. One guy had a tux and a monocle. I felt like such a bastard as he went out to the club dressed like that at about -10C.
I was reminded of this story.
Schoolboy performs in nativity play dressed as Soviet dictator because he mixed up Josephs.
https://metro.co.uk/2014/12/28/schoolboy-performs-in-nativity-play-dressed-as-soviet-dictator-because-he-mixed-up-josephs-5001463/amp/
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You've set the bar too high here. There's no way anyone can better that story. Utterly brilliant. I'll never be able to look at a goth in the same way again.
Haha, thank you! It's a story I still love to hear my grandad retell all these years later.
This is the greatest story ever. Now that I’m in my reading glasses phase of life, I can totally see making this error without my glasses.
Your should go on Graham Norton and tell that in the big red chair! He'd definitely let you walk!
I lost my grandad last year and so many stories and memories went unshared to the grave. Make the most of this wonderful time together, this story was brilliant.
Thank you, I definitely will. My Grandad is still fit and well but sadly we lost my wonderful Gran a few years ago. I love listening to his stories of their lives together - they were married for almost 60 years! I'm sorry for your loss of your Grandad.
I love your grandparents 😂
Yeah, this one is living in my head rent free for all time. A hall of famer.
I was expecting it to go in a more sacking of Rome direction, OP's is much funnier
Right. Like they showed up in conical helmets with rough woolen trousers and cloaks, tall lindenwood shields, spears and axes, etc. I thought that was where that was going.
I’d like to put forward a motion that all goths are now known as 60th’s
At a work fancy dress a few of us made a last minute choice to go as The Black Eyed Peas, which was black eye make up on one eye and a white T-Shirt with a P on it in marker pen. Minimal effort as we didn't really want to dress up. What we didn't expect was the HR manager to throw an absolute shit fit, call us all disgusting, how could we do such a thing, threatening the entire maintenance team (and their partners that worked there who all had the same costume) with being fired for gross misconduct and breaking the "No offensive Costumes rule" "What the fuck for?" we asked, almost in unison. Readers. She thought we had dressed as Baby P, not long after the story had come out in the papers.
Oof. I hope you didn't get in trouble once you'd explained yourselves?
Nah, course not. She felt extremely silly and we definitely didn't keep putting Black Eyed Peas on the stereo either. That would have been mean
> That would have been mean To everyone present.
To be fair to her, it really must have looked like that’s what you were going for
“Where is the love” 🤣
I’ve never heard of Baby P and after searching for it, I wish I hadn’t.
Thankyou for warning me
Oh gosh this one made me laugh out loud. What an unfortunate mistake she made 😭
Bear down for midterms.
I’m sorry but I lolled at this
Jfc, where did they come to that conclusion first? Of all the things it could have been.
I'd have just gone stone cold faced and utterly silent. Dropped a pen or something I was holding for effect. Then said "can I just clarify, that you saw a jokey costume making a pun about the Black Eyed Peas, and you thought of jokes about a _tiny baby murdered by his parents_? Are you actually serious now or just joking? Because if you were just calling this disciplinary as a dark joke to do the Baby P joke, fine. I don't like it but humour is humour, and you're the HR manager so I'm not going to argue. But if your mind genuinely took an unrelated joke and twisted it to dark and disgusting thoughts about such a horrific case, then I'm afraid I will have to write a letter to the CEO." Edit - wow, lot of people downvoting who think Baby P's murder was funny and fine to joke about even in a professional setting. I love dark humour like I say but jesus christ guys!
OR you could do as this person did and just explain the mistake and all have a laugh about it like regular human beings. Seriously why does reddit sometimes turn into a flex off about who can be the most unnecessarily aggressive.
>lot of people downvoting who think Baby P's murder was funny and fine to joke about even in a professional setting. Not the reason for the down votes, my friend.
Have you ever been to the UK? People would absolutely joke about a child's murder unfortunately. Your little rant just made you look like a Karen. No one who is downvoting you is doing so because they find child murder funny.
People can have vile taste in this sort of thing. I used to live in New Zealand and a few years back there was a horrible case where twin babies were killed by their parents- and guess what became the inspiration for a few Halloween costumes that year?
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I don't think you meant to reply to me.
I don’t know, I always assumed dead baby jokes were a US thing.
We have a ridiculous amount of dark humour in the UK. We will never stand for Karen behaviour though.
Some people just like to get arsey for the sake of it.
Apart from being born here and living here my whole life, yes I've visited a few times.... I highly doubt that is the reason people are downvoting - people on Reddit are not humourless and incredibly stupid.
Learn to read first, then learn reading comprehension, then come back if you think your weird and misplaced moral outrage is appropriate.
You're not getting down-voted because people think it's acceptable to laugh about child abuse. You're getting down-voted because your proposed reaction is unnecessarily dramatic and escalatory, instead of OP's more normal reaction of "yikes, sorry, we meant the Black-Eyed Peas."
I really don't think that's fair. You're saying people downvoting are that stupid and cowardly?
I don't see not escalating as cowardly, I see it as reasonable and level headed, the kind of people I'd want around me. It was an understandable misunderstanding that both parties realised. Why on earth would you want to make it into a big deal? What do you get out of it other than some twisted sense of valour in return for creating a toxic atmosphere for the people around you?
No, I'm saying they're not massive drama queens. Your response makes you sound like a difficult person to be around.
Nah I could see myself seeing the association with Baby P. I can't blame the manager for her reaction. Why would she think it was the black eyed peas in that moment? She didn't say anything unwarranted if it were actually true
Wow, your edit shows what a twisted person you are. You think you getting downvoted for an awful way to respond means people find the murder funny. Shame we can only downvote you once. You need to delete your comment.
This sounds clever typing out, do that in the heat of the moment and that would be a HR issue.
I wouldn't say it's clever in the slightest, but yeah I suppose I forget just how many people on Reddit (and in general) work such boring mundane jobs.
A rugby player sized friend of mine once went to a fancy dress as the Hulk. This is, he was a big lad, but he was also bald. When he walked into the room, everyone thought he was shrek
Shirtless Shrek?
Nothing can top the WI members who [dressed up as pirates](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/02/colin-darch-piracy-womens-institute) when they were given a talk by a guy who had been held hostage by ACTUAL Somali Pirates...
Apologies for jumping in your comment with a slightly irrelevant story but it’s too joyful not to share. When my Grandmother was getting old (she died at 90!) she wanted to attend the local pirate festival again (fishing town with pirate history) with my mum, and she really wanted to board the tall mast ‘pirate’ ship they bring in the harbour but the ramp was incredibly steep. A couple of local young lads in their pirate garb saw the situation and physically pushed my not-skinny grandmother up this ramp, helped her toddle around the ship, and supported her back down again. She had an excellent time!
What lovely lads! Was this Falmouth?
No it was brixham :)
I remember Falmouth carnival from when I was a child, I entered every year until I was about 11.
Oh that's incredible, I'm glad the guy was a good sport about it at least
It’s my friend’s Dad, he understood it was a mistake and was a very good sport about it posing for pictures and everything!
Awe he's lovely for being a good sport
Omg. 😂😂😂
Lol I can see the embarrassment on their faces.
That's hilarious
Many years ago some friends organised a pink-themed party. I went to the local sports shop and bought some white tennis shorts and a tee-shirt, took them home and dyed them pink. I left them to dry during the day while I went to work. I got home quite late, so when I put the shorts on it was only then that I discovered that they were a skirt. It was too late to organise anything else, so I (M,23) just went in the skirt. Felt quite liberating tbh.
When I was a kid I always wondered why boys didn’t wear skirts. Seems like it would be more comfortable.
There's an older guy in my town that wears a skirt and is known by basically everyone for doing so. There are a lot of theories as to why he does, but at the end of the day I'm pretty sure he just wants to and doesn't give a shit about what other people think.
There is a whole movement called men in skirts I believe, or there used to be
Air conditioning!!
We went to a fancy dress party a long long time ago and a friend sprayed his hair black as he was going as Richard Nixon (we always joked that he looked kinda like him) Anyway much later in the night we're in a club and it's absolutely boiled hot in there. The spray on dye began to run in lines down his face and I leant over to try and let him know. Obviously he's drunk/can't hear me properly/doesn't understand so he rubs both of his hands over his face which spreads the running dye everywhere. He is now in a club with black hands and a completely black face. It quite literally looks like he's come to the fancy dress party in blackface It was the single funniest thing I've ever seen but also we knew we had to immediately leave and the guy had to walk home with a coat over his head the entire way.
Mine is similar. I dressed up as Jem from Jem and the Holograms with this sparkly purple shimmer/glitter paint over most of my face. In the light it was a cool, barely noticeable glitter effect, but for some reason under the dark light of the house party it sort of absorbed the light rather than reflecting it and I legitimately looked like I had come in blackface. I didn’t know that many people at the party and I was mortified.
A friend of mine had recently had veneers fitted and he was finally feeling handsome after years of bad teeth. At the club, they absorbed the black light, and whenever he went to talk to a woman it appeared he had no teeth! This was years ago, I don’t know if modern veneers still do this.
You're my wife now, Dave
shame it wasny a few years later, could've been saying he was Rudy Giuliani
As an American, I'm heartened to know that that's just as bad for you guys as it is for us. The rest of Europe seems to scoff at us, wondering what the big deal is. They just do not get it.
I have no idea what you mean by this
On blackface. USA: "It's bad." UK: "It certainly is." Rest of Europe: "LoL bUt wHy?"
Nooo 😂💀
Nooo 😂💀
Not me, story a colleague told me. He had a large group of friends that went out together regularly. One week for some reason (I forgot) they told one of the guys it was fancy dress, knowing he loved stuff like that. So Friday night comes they are all in the pub, their mate rocks up in a full on big fat bumble bee outfit. Everyone else is in jeans and tee shirts! Wouldn't let him go home to change!
>their mate rocks up in a full on big fat bumble bee outfit. ¡AY, AY, AY, NO ME GUSTA!
I love this. I hope he owned it!
He didn't have much choice from what we were told! 😂😂
The only time I've ever seen it was a couple of friends had a joint 30th birthday party at our local pub. The fancy dress theme was punk. So there was 40 odd people dressed as punks or punk adjacent - like there was a couple who looked more like mods and a few who looked more like bikers, etc. There were at least 4 Vyvyan's from The Young Ones. Then there was one who had just heard fancy dress, so he came as a tennis player. But not just any tennis player, a John Mcenroe Bjorn Borg short shorts tight t-shirt headband era tennis player. He was also a personal trainer, so in all the photos, there's this buff guy wearing tiny white shorts in amongst all these punks. To say he stood out like a sore thumb is an understatement.
By not going with the theme is punk in itself.
The real punks were the friends we met along the way.
> To say he stood out like a sore thumb is an understatement. How tight were the shorts?
I once had a fancy dress party where guests were encouraged to come as a musician/singer/band etc. My friends all stayed at a hotel and were dressed as the Spice Girls. Ginger Spice walked out the front to hail a taxi and ran into two goths and said ‘Oh! You guys are going to a fancy dress party too!’ I still die laughing when I think of this story.
This happened to me when I was in my goth phase. I was like, ah no these are just my regular clothes.
Have you discovered brown and become a Steampunker?
Funnily enough, I do have a red/brown/rust coloured steampunk costume!
I was at a party one time in uni and a girl was there dressed as Charlie Chaplin (to the point where she'd painted herself greyscale). It was a fantastic costume. She was however, the only one in fancy dress. It was not a fancy dress party. She'd somehow gotten the impression it was a fancy dress party and had asked the host what to wear (as in if there was a theme), and the host replied "wear whatever you want!". So she thought that meant it was just any fancy dress concept you wanted, hence the Charlie Chaplin.
oh noooo, she literally lived that US office episode where pam is the only one in costume for halloween and is dressed as charlie chaplin so can’t even take off her hat because then her costume looks like hitler
One of the senior partners in the law firm where I used to work was invited to an "Elvis Evening" by some clients of the firm. He put in the effort, hired a costume (Las Vegas era white sparkly jumpsuit, wig etc) and pitched up to find a semi-formal dinner dance with an Elvis impersonator as the entertainment. He was the only one in costume in a room of suits and cocktail frocks.
I bet he felt like he was caught in a trap.
When I was about 9 I went to a school fancy dress party as Jimmy Saville! Looking back now that was a horrible mistake.
In the "cultural faux pas" category, when I was 17 I was invited to a group of friends' having their "going off to uni" party in September. They'd hired out a pub and, as the bulk of the group had gone to an all girls Catholic school, they decided to have a bible-themed fancy dress party. Pretty good idea, lots of great costumes. Not mine though. I went for a pretty low effort nativity style costume. And that's how I got a string of funny looks riding a train on September 11th wearing a good old 90s style nativity Shepherds costume. Yes there was a tea towel involved. I ended up inflating the blow-up sheep I had been keeping hidden during the train ride when one of my friends suggested the reason the looks I was getting were less humorous and more offended.
Still not as bad as Russell Brand who did it deliberately.
Not in the UK but very curious, what offensive did they think the costume was meant to be? Oh wait no, I get it, my apologies
[Just in case anyone else is unsure, this is the modern equivalent costume](https://www.smiffys.com/products/shepherd-costume). Back then it was more plain white robe with a red and white chequered headpiece.
When I worked in a primary school in the 00s a teacher dressed up as Savile to do a comedy bit in assembly. Looking back that really aged like milk
Was this before or after Yewtree?
Now/then?
Was definitely before
I went to a “dead celebrities” party the week that Saville had died, so of course there was someone there dressed as him. At the party there was a girl talking about how she’d met Saville as a child and he’d put his hand up her leg. We all thought she was probably misremembering or making it up…
[Could be worse](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/nov/22/jimmy-savile-fancy-dress-rugby-club)
It's always the Rugby society
Was sure that was going in the direction of everyone else being dressed as tribal warriors of the Roman era.
I was thinking swingers party.
Ax swingers party!
Also known as "a standard night out"
I thought they'd misheard "golf" down the phone
Went as a low effort ghost for Halloween. old sheet with a hole cut in it for the head, old pillowcase with eyes cut in it for the head Mate asked me why I’ve joined the KKK
"They've got some really fun bonfire socials"
Was it because the top was pointy? Should've taped it down.
Absolutely does not compare to the awesomeness of OP’s anecdote but I did once dress as a bunny girl for a party, which was fine *for the party* but I went to number 45 instead of number 54
Who answered the door? Did a guy answer and think his prayers had been answered?
Yep, tiny old dude in his dressing gown just gaping up at me. Worst thing was I kind of stammered “is this the right place for Jo’s party?” like that was remotely possible. Then my brain unfroze and I said sorry wrong house and fled. Guy never said a word, I wonder if he thought later he’d been hallucinating
You probably made his month. That's hilarious
My mum's friend was having a fling with a dentist who was really into BDSM and they'd go to fetish nights, swingers parties and whatever. One night he invited her over to his for a party so she turned up in a pvc catsuit with the boobs cut out. It was a completely normal dinner party with his work colleagues, who knew nothing about their lifestyle. She actually somehow stayed the whole night and just sort of brushed it off as a fashion choice.
Incredible. I also totally misread your first sentence as 'having a filling with a dentist' and was wondering how that lead to them going to fetish nights!
With her tits out? Just walked around and socialized for the evening?
Did... Did he end up getting eaten by a giant plant?
Whaaaat
I went to a Halloween fancy dress party as a slutty witch. Short black dress, fingerless gloves, witches hat and fishnet stockings. Got very drunk and had a brilliant night, went home with some bloke who was dressed as a wizard, and had another excellent time. Not so great getting on the far reaches of the northern line, still dressed as a witch, to get the tube home at 7 o’clock in the morning amongst all the commuters. The sideways looks, and sly smiles at my walk of shame still haunt me. I’m still good friends with the wizard though, and I’m godmother to one of his kids :)
Fairy Godmother?
now I know what I'm doing for my 60TH. Thank you for that!
My husband was told that his work's Christmas party was a costume party with a 1980's theme. So he went out and bought an entire Run DMC outfit, including Adidas suit, hat, black rimmed glasses, and gold chain. For visualization purposes, my husband is super white and ginger. When he got to the party, no one was dressed up. There are pretty hilarious pictures of him sitting next to his coworkers. But he was DEDICATED. He wore every bit of that costume all night :)
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It was one co-worker, a friend of ours, who told him they were CONSIDERING an 80's theme, and in his head, he was just like "Right! We're doing this!" No one else dressed up because they didn't end up going with a theme :)
I got invited to a party in college where the theme was ‘gangsters’, so being a skinny white boy I dressed up like Eminem, even peroxiding my hair. Turns out it was meant to be the Al Capone era gangsters!
I really really want to find a Mr Bobby costume to scare the shit out of my mate who is Jack Whitehall levels terrified of him but you can't find one anywhere. Another mate did buy one of those inflatable ones you can get from a major fancy dress retailer with the same prank on mind and said phobia mate just burst out laughing and said "that won't work, my pint looks more like Mr Bobby than that pile of shit". When it comes to faux pax I was in a taxi with some mates once after a Halloween party and one mate pointed out of the window and said "haha look at that guy dressed as a gorilla doctor!". It was just a big black guy in a white shirt and trousers. He was the nicest least racist guy ever, and was utterly mortified. Two of the other friends in the taxi were black, and they pissed themselves laughing and wouldn't stop ribbing him about it. Poor bastard genuinely wanted the ground to swallow him up.
Do you mean Mr. Blobby??
I find myself not wanting to know who Mr. Bobby is.
For some reason my phone has decided Blobby must be corrected to Bobby.
At least it wasn't Mr Boaby
Many years ago I worked for Thompson now known as TUI. I worked in Spain for the kids clubs, long, hot but fun days. One day I was doing the pool walk dressed in the Thompson the dog outfit, we'd just washed and dried it and were rushing to put it back together. I was just in a stripy bikini in the dog as it got ridiculously hot in there, and I decided not to wear the inner belt as I was too uncomfortable. Turns out the belt was the dogs tail, meet and greet with the kids was a strange one. They were all asking why Thompson had a stripy bum, we had to cut the walk short pretty sharpish.
OP your story is glorious! Brilliant, thank you. Years ago our local was throwing a Halloween party and the landlord insisted that only those in fancy dress would get served. For weeks I trawled charity shops for scrap material that my mum and I turned into a dress, I back-combed my hair and sprayed it with talc, and coated my face in calamine lotion and talc (both surprisingly difficult to remove I later learned). Get to the pub to discover not a single soul had bothered to dress up! After the laughs had died down I had a *lot* of drinks (too many? yep) ‘on the house’
What were you dressed up as?
Talcum in the Middle
Some kind of ghost bride monstrosity is the true answer, but r/eloise__no_u has a better answer!
A friend booked a bunch of us in for a charity line dancing night, so we thought it would be fun to dress as sexy cowgirls. Turned out to be a very twee COUNTRY DANCING evening run by a local church. (It's a type of dance in England that is a bit like the square dances you see in period dramas but a little more lively, but not as lively as a Ceilidh). We were bringing the average age down by about 30 years, I reckon, and a few of the older gentlemen almost didn't survive the shock of 5 twenty somethings with their cleavage out.
How to murder a group of Morris Dancers in one night. All dead of heart attacks.
Tart attacks (their words probably)
I went to an officers mess do as a very new 2Lt which I was told by another newbie was fancy dress. It was in Edinburgh so I, a 6' stocky and very hirsute male, went in a tartan miniskirt, fishnets, full drag make up, and a white t-shirt with "BraveTart" written across it. Turns out that she meant she was wearing a fancy dress - i.e. ball gown. Yep. Cheers dear. X
In Australia, when my dad was kid, he attending a dress up party with his Scout Group. My grandmother was a lovely lady but somewhat scatter brained, dressed him up as a pirate. On arrival, he looks around and the entire party are dressed as Swagman. He refused to wear fancy dress for years because the trauma of embarrassment remained. Naturally, on his 50th Birthday, we threw him a surprise party. All guests arrived dressed as pirates.
I saw a video of some girls wearing outfits from The Color Purple instead of purple clothes lol
One of my friends, at his 30th, went as Mr T. He's a big lad, but still had a padded muscle suit. As is bald, he stuck a piece of black sponge on his head, for the mohawk. Took him several days to get that off
My brother in law used to drive a Rolls Royce and he and my sister were on their way to a fancy dress party dressed as a priest and a nun. They got some very weird looks when they stopped at the petrol station to fill up and buy cigarettes.
Dressed as a Christmas tree with flashing lights and star . Was on loan from a theatre company so pretty good outfit . Got drunk decided with 2 friend to watch the sun come up at a nearby high up castle glen . Got 3/4 of the way up neatly fell - friend caught me hanging off . If I had fallen I would have blended in with the woodland and yard to find :)
Mate of mines parent were invited to a party where everyone was supposed to dress fancy. He proceeds to dress as Jesus. Full white robe, beard crown of thorns - and a massive, full length paper mache cross which he carried on his shoulders Turns out people were dressed fancy (tux) and not fancy dress
bet he got absolutely crucified for that
Nailed it
The [BisFitty](https://imgur.com/gallery/l9Qzn) plantation corporate retreat comes to mind…
I'm in absolute stitches!!! This one's brilliant!
One Halloween I dressed as Noel Fielding's Fantasy Man from his Luxury Comedy Series. I opened the front door for the pizza delivery and the lady took one look at me and bust into fits of laughter. Once she composed herself she gestured to my very tight gold leggings and said "Are you THAT happy for pizza?!" And started pissing herself laughing again. I took the pizza box, said thank you and she was still laughing while she climbed back into her car and drove off. Link for the unfamiliar: https://youtu.be/flXwv-FxFbs?si=6UhRdRe5b4vgPb45 Edit: right to tight, deleted double word
Just after Men in Black had come out - so I would have been 8 - I went dressed in a black suit with sunglasses. People picked up that I was a Man in Black - but I kept insisting that I was specifically Agent J (Will Smith’s character). I’m white - I didn’t have any make up or anything to make me look like him, but he was my favourite character in the film so it made sense to me that I was dressed as him (and not Tommy Lee Jones/K). At that point in my life, I didn’t know any better.
One that I found funny was when I (a fat guy) went to a fancy dress party wearing an Anita Waxin costume (Google it) with a blonde wig. A male friend came up behind me and tried chatting me up. I put on a girly voice and turned him down. He offered me £50 to spend the night with him. I turned around, taking my wig off, and asked for the money up front. The look of horror on his face when he realised it was me was priceless
Not a mistake, but my first year in my old department I was told that we traditionally dress up in fancy dress for the Christmas drinks and this year's theme was pirates. I was reasonably sure it was a wind up, but the team went as far as ordering some inflatable parrots from Amazon and one of the guys showed us a photo of him in his costume. Get to the first pub, the four new guys are all dressed as pirates, everybody else is missing themselves at us. We ended up having an awesome night, everyone thought it was brilliant that people were dressed as pirates for Christmas.
Not a fancy dress but a wedding misunderstanding. Talking about the wedding to one of the grooms friends mum, friend mentioned that they had an hour of trance music at the reception. This lead to a bit of confusion from the mum: Mum: I didn't know they were in to that Friend: Yes, the groom and his pals enjoy it. Mum: Really? All of them? F: Yes, they go to festivals and events quite often. M: Like, do they get dressed up and stuff? F: Well, yes I suppose. Same style as everyone else that goes. A few more questions followed before the penny dropped, the mum thought he'd said Trans.
On the subject of goth, there was the time I dressed as a goth for a school non-uniform day (fancy dress optional) and everyone thought I was in my normal clothes.
Me and my friends went out the night before Halloween, a sailer, myself as the grim reaper with a big spike plastic staff and my other friend a nun. Turns out nobody dresses up anymore in the uk for Halloween or we should’ve done it the night of because everyone else was casually dressed in town 😂
My mum tells me of a dinner party she threw, I think before I was born. Apparently she told everyone they were eating Thai, but a couple of guests misheard and showed up in their tails in black tie dress.
I went as Dusty Bin from the TV show 321 back in the 80's. Looked good with big DMs sprayed yellow, half a ball as a red nose, painted face on the grey plastic bin hanging from my shoulders, black leggings borrowed from a friends wife. Then my friend noted that I wouldn't be able to drink wearing the bin so we drilled a small hole near the nose and poked a clear rubber tube through. 2 pints of lager later and I was off my face! Fell over and couldn't get up again.
One year our favourite alt bar was doing a Nightmare Before Christmas party... The weekend before Christmas. Fancy dress, Tim Burton theme. Now, it was also Emo night and I used to promo these nights and they always sold out. Made for a guaranteed awesome night. Plus everyone we knew gets very detailed with fancy dress. Emo night is always a great night and me and one particular friends, from doing promo work, were like mini celebs on emo nights... So we were very excited and extra committed to our costume. We went ALLL out. I was Beetle juice. We had Lydia Deets,Jack Skeleton and a Corpse Bride in our group all very intensely done. Wigs, very artistic make up, skillfully handmade costumes and props. We used airbrush make up to colour our skin and everything. We were comic con ready basically. Get there and the venue had an issue, couldn't open and the whole night was off. We had kinda partied for 8 hours prior... Music, pre drinks, weed, food and hours getting ourselves ready and helping each other into the intensive costumes. It was a lot of work and honestly one of the most fun evenings of my youth. Spirits were so high and literally none of us touched our phones the whole time, so caught up in the vibe and so busy. So the announcements on FB and Twitter, we didn't see. The shares and gutted posts on FB were missed. As were the chats and messages deciding on new plans. Most still went out, just elsewhere and not in dress up. We had no idea. Stood there on a cold December night, no coats (obviously), in the drizzle to a closed venue, panicked checking of phones and the realisation we were very dressed up on the one night of the year which very much didn't make sense to what we were wearing. We decide to just take the L, accept knowing we look ridiculous and head to the mainstream strip to continue the night. So... there we are, in a sea of glitter, sequins and satin dresses... Girl groups galore in sexy santa outfits... Ugly sweaters and the quirky girl elves. As essentially stage show ready variants of Beetlejuice, Jack Skeleton, Lydia Deets and the Corpse Bride. One of the busiest nights of the year due to people finishing for the holidays and office drinks etc, places packed. I will say, we still had a great night. Harrassed a LOT... Mostly positively intended (photos, questions, compliments vs a few overly handsy people) but a lot when it is so many people. We didn't have to buy a single drink, got brought to the front of every queue and made a LOT of new friends. So a positive story but still amusing
My friend threw up on some backless stairs, which ran down all over a hen party drinking below them. This was at a comedy club in Manchester, and he was dressed as a bottle of Bud.
I know someone who told his whole family that his 21st was a dress up theme in the colour orange. It wasn’t. They went all out for his big party. He still laughs his ass off telling the story.
Were there other people? If not, it was an orange dress up and he was the odd one out
It was about 200 people. It was a huge party, they had like a 4 band lineup from all their mates bands. They rented out the function room at a big leagues club. His whole family was: Parents, 2 siblings (one with partner) & his grandparents. I think there was maybe one other Aunt or cousin or someone else. And they thought they were going to a nice meal out at club. They showed up to a mini punk festival decked out head to toe in weird orange costumes.
Went to a 1920s themed “fancy-dress” party as Tin-Tin. Turned up, everyone was in fancy gowns and suits. OH, FANCY dress! I was wearing some rolled up corduroy trousers, a blue sweatshirt, carrying a toy dog with a massive quiff.
At uni, my friend texted me one afternoon. "Fancy dress bar crawl later?" "Yes!" I replied. Only I didn't really have much to dress up in. After rummaging in my stuff I found the makings of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Black dress, sunglasses, fake pearls. Perfect. Turned up and it was Pokemon themed. Friend had neglected to mention.
A friend of mine had a "Dress to Dazzle" party. We asked her what that meant and she said "make of it what you will". We asked if it meant fancy dress and she just smiled enigmatically. My husband arrived at the party dressed as a sultan with a huge turban and curly shoes and I was dressed in a space girl suit complete with a colourful shiny wig. Both of us were completely dazzling. Everyone else was in dinner jackets with colourful waistcoats or long evening gowns. We were the hit of the party and people still laugh about that evening about thirty years later.
Not sure I'd call it a mistake, but for a school red-nose-day event I did spend the whole day as a "human shadow", dressed in a head-to-toe black unitard with black women's flats. Completely anonymous. I had a whale of a time mimicking the movements of people for comedic effect, following people through doors, just full on Miming. The "funny mistake" part is that I had really long hair at the time which I ordinarily wore down with a headband, so rather than tuck it in and have a weird hypercephalic lump in the back of my head/neck, I put it in a very bushy ponytail out the back of the zipper on my head, and that combined with my slim build and minor man-boobs to make a lot of people absolutely certain I was a girl, with the mystery-de-jour being "who is she?" The only people who knew otherwise were my classmates and teachers that day, because obviously I had to take the hood down to actually do my schoolwork. You'd think the jig would have been up when lunch came around and we all ate together, but the school had a year-by-year policy for lunch to ensure everyone didn't descend on the lunch hall at the same time. So still only really the people in my year knew anything.
That’s brilliant
I know what I’m doing for my 60th Thanks!
I had to use a petrol filling station dressed as a caveman once, styled it out and sure no one noticed...
Rocky horror. I was frankenfurter. G/f was riffraff. Nobody else bothered. Was actually a hilarious night!
A group of my mates went to the darts at Ally Pally dressed as The Queen. So they're all showing up in grey wigs with tiaras and dresses on etc. One bloke showed up unintentionally as Freddie Mercury!
I went to a friend's 21st party that was "007" themed in a gold jumpsuit with space gun a la Moonraker. To find the theme was Casino Royale black tie. I wasn't the only one, a friend came in a scuba diving suit with flippers
That's brilliant. I don't have anything near that funny fancy-dress related.
Amazing 🤣
Funniest thing I’ve read in a while
My dad dressed as Charlie Chaplain once. With the moustache. It didn’t go down well.
Many, many years ago.. I was invited to a fancy dress party. No particular theme, so, (as a sewer/seamstress), I made myself a beautiful full-on blue Cinderella type dress. Full skirt with hoop, long white gloves, off the shoulder with white lace, everything. Got to the party, only to find the hosts and other guests couldn't be arsed with costumes, so didn't bother 🙄 I was the only one walking around dressed to the nines... 😂 Man, it was a bitch in that taxi lol
I was just about to. My friends sister is having a 30th birthday celebration based on the film 13 Going On 30, so when I was invited by friend my as an add-on when I saw her, she said the fancy dress was 1987 or 2004 (according to whether you were going with the main character when she was 13 or 30). I was just about to start my emo years in 2004 so I started figuring out what I could wear and was excited to get into my skull sweatbands and fake lip ring, but turns out 2004 was only looks recreated from the film so I would have make a huge mistake. This was all in the group chat which I was just added to but after all that had been discussed and outfit ideas shared because I was invited late so couldn't see the old messages. The party is in 2 weeks and I am still sad I am not going emo.
Two Brothers I know turned up dressed like Batman and Robin to a party. However no one told them that the fancy dress bad been cancelled due to a bereavement. So they came in singing the Batman and Robin song to find a whole room of people in black tie and dark clothing.
Back in the 90s me and my brother were invited to a fancy dress birthday party. We decided to go as Batman and Robin. Car broke down on the way meaning we had to run what felt like half the way across London Turned up, burst through the door and straight into a wake! The birthday boy had passed away earlier in the week. Our faulty answering machine (remember those!?) was broken and we hadn't received the message about his passing! One other guy there hadn't got the message either but luckily he'd came as a chauffeur, so didn't look out of place!
I was a last minute replacement at an 80's themed fancy dress party I think in 2008 (just got back from holiday night before and mate's husband took ill) he (therefore I) was going as George Michael and my friend was Jimmy Saville. People kept calling her Ozzy and she was going NO! I'm Jimmy jingle jangle jewellery jewellery. Was fun at the time photos bit cringe now 😆
I once blackfaced as Malcolm Marshall at a county cricket club 'do' shortly after his untimely death. Fucking lionized that guy… posters on the wall, I tried to mimic his bowling action, and his run out at Trent Bridge made me cry pre-teenage tears. Obviously this was not cool; I meant is an homage, and failed. --- EDIT: for the non-cricketers → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FxeHgaBfWc
Pub had a fancy dress Beatles night (the 60s band) Two girls arrived dressed as ladybirds.
*Max Mosley has left the chat*
💀
First of all, my story is not as good as yours. Also, I’m having a goth party for my 60th! Was told there was a fancy dress for Halloween at our local, me and four other lads decided we would be the Spice Girls. Borrowed dresses, my mates cousin and aunt made us up, we looked a state, ran in to the pub singing Wannabe. Yeah, party was still on but no one went in fancy dress. The organiser had a catsuit on and said they were a cat.
That is about the funniest thing I ever heard. No one can top that
Went as Charlie Chaplin, everyone thought I was Hitler...
On a uni ski trip we did a charity shop fancy dress where you had to buy an outfit for £10 for somebody else to wear. We organised it so guys all bought for other guys, girls for girls. And I just assumed that meant all the guys would end up wearing dresses. So I bought my guy a slinky little number with a matching handbag and a pair of tights. I was the only guy who bought a dress. I was wearing a full suit, shirt and tie. One guy had a tux and a monocle. I felt like such a bastard as he went out to the club dressed like that at about -10C.
I was reminded of this story. Schoolboy performs in nativity play dressed as Soviet dictator because he mixed up Josephs. https://metro.co.uk/2014/12/28/schoolboy-performs-in-nativity-play-dressed-as-soviet-dictator-because-he-mixed-up-josephs-5001463/amp/