Hal-Con 2011 Costume Contest

One of my personal favourite costumes at the contest: Gaia AKA Mother Nature

One of the big events at Hal-Con, if not the biggest, is the costume contest. The freedom to spend the weekend dressed up in a costume you worked on tirelessly with other people in wild outfits carrying cool props is quite mind blowing and liberating.

Getting to go on stage and strut your stuff with people cheering you on? Probably one of the most fun and liberating experiences you can have.



I did my best to include just about everyone in this slideshow. I apologize to anyone I might have missed. There were over 100 costumes so this was quite the challenge. To see the photographs more in detail, check out my Hal-Con 2011 Costume Contest Gallery.

I sat in the audience dressed up as Kenzi from Lost Girl. I wanted to go as someone I totally admire and that goth Toronto gal with a wicked sense of humour is right up my alley. Here is a video of me nervously waiting for the show to begin.

As great as it was to cheer for everyone, I was so excited to see my husband Reg strut his robotic self on stage as Bender from Futurama. That costume has quite the saga behind it which I will be writing about soon. The article will be called Becoming Bender.




Instead of taking photographs, I wanted to capture the entire time Reg was on stage. I wanted to be able to go back to that moment and listen to the cheers, hear the compilation he put together and watch him show off his hard work. It paid off but as a result, I have had that damned B-E-N-D-E-R mantra spiralling through my brain ever since. Still, it was worth it. He rocked!

OTHER AWESOME MOMENTS




There were other highlights for me like these two from X-Men dressed up as Sabertooth and Wolverine, duking it out. Love it!




Steampunk was everywhere! These are the Sky Pirates.




One of the funniest moments of the night was having the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man attack our favourite Ghost Buster during the contest. Oh my god, how I laughed! It was awesome!




Another spontaneous and this time beautiful moment was the on-stage marriage proposal.




Which had a happy ending. So adorable!




Since it was the convention's first proposal, they were awarded two Warp Drive passes for next year's convention!




These are two of the big winners of the con and I can see why! I love how varied, detailed, thought provoking and impressive all the costumes were. From the simple to the most complicated, people loved putting together their costume and sharing their fandom with others.

I may not have known who all of the characters were on stage and walking around the convention but it did not matter. We got to be our favourite people for the day, real or unreal. That made us all winners.