Creative Halloween Family Costume Ideas

Unique Group Halloween Costumes Ideas for your Family or Friends

With Halloween fast approaching, it’s time to figure out your families costumes for this October. If you’re struggling to come up with an idea, don’t worry! We’ve compiled a list of some of our families most creative group costumes through the years to get the creative juices flowing. In our home, Halloween is a favorite holiday and we relish coming up with unique family costumes. So get ready to dig through your closets, tap into your creativity and grab a glue gun for some DIY costumes. Need a costume ASAP, we’ve also attached helpful links to Amazon when possible, for ready to wear costumes.

I only recommend products I would use myself and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that add no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission to help offset the cost of my blog.

Tips & Inspiration for DIY Group Halloween Costumes

Every year we’ve noticed more and more family and themed group costumes. We love seeing all the unique ideas, here are some tips for brainstorming group costumes.

Check out second hand stores and Goodwills to get ideas and find inexpensive costumes. It never fails that I find a costume and it will spark an idea and run with that theme. You’ll be surprised at what a little bit of creativity and a glue gun can accomplish. The majority of costumes and characters can be DIY costumes that can be easily made.

Broad Themed Costumes

Sometimes with large families it can be difficult to have enough characters for everyone. As a family of six, we often pick a theme and base our costumes around it. Broader themes like underwater, animals, seasons, food, or games are a way to incorporate a large group. It works well because each person can craft a unique costume for themselves, but still have individuality within the broad theme.

Fair Themed Halloween Costumes

After spending a weeks time in September at fair, it made sense to recreate the iconic parts of fair for Halloween. Bring out the fair ride, cotton candy, cowboy, blue ribbon cow, dirt bike rider and carnie.

Fair theme family costumes

Making the DIY cotton candy costume, along with the fair ride took some extra time, but was well worth the effort. The cotton candy costume required an old t-shirt stolen from dad, a glue gun, and an enormous amount of pink tulle.

Chick-fil-A cow costume Halloween

Restaurant Chains and Food Themes

Another easy group costume idea for Halloween are restaurant chains and food themed costumes. This adorable cow costume got quite the usage last year. My littlest charmed everyone at Chick-fil-A, as well as our fair theme.

Fishing theme Family Costume -Fisherman, Mermaid, Shark and Lobster costumes

Fishing Theme

Another year our idea was a fishing theme featuring a fisherman, lobster, mermaid and shark. We hauled a small fishing boat in for our trunk or treat backdrop to pass out candy.

Garden Theme Group Costume

Sometimes you stumble across the cutest costume that fits your child’s personality. After finding this adorable gnome costume, I just couldn’t resist, especially with my son’s white toe-headed hair.

I crafted the additional costumes around a garden theme and let my other children decide what they wanted to be; we ended up with a gnome, butterfly, frog, spider, gardener, farmer and even our dog was a bumblebee.

Garden Themed Costumes with Gnome, Gardener, Frog, Butterfly, Spider and Farmer

Camping Theme

Think of using your hobbies as inspiration. We’re big campers in our family and love fall camping at Michigan State Parks. So it was relatively easy to come up with these easy family costume ideas geared towards camping. A fisherman, can of worms, smore, fire, Smokey the Bear, hotdog, and Swiss army knife costume completed the theme.

Movie Character Costumes

Choosing characters from books, movies, or tv can be a fun take on modern culture. There is no end to the variety of options. The best part is that adult characters can be worn for children’s costume choices and vice versa. Comic affect is also easily achieved by role reversal of male to female characters.

Home Alone family costumes with Kevin and the Wet Bandits

Home Alone Costumes. Kevin and the Wet Bandits

Who doesn’t love the iconic Christmas movie Home Alone. We chose a Christmas movie theme one Halloween and it was a hit. These were incredibly easy costumes to create after visiting the thrift store where we snagged a trench coat, suitcoat and bright red sweater. Add in some face paint, feathers and a tarantula to recreate the infamous Kevin and the Wet Bandits.

The Grinch, Cindy Lou and Max Halloween Costumes

To continue the Christmas movie theme, half of our family dressed as the Grinch, Cindy Lou and Max, the dog. This was great holiday theme that can be carried over for Christmas events.

Storybook Character Costumes

Storybook or sci-fi characters can be easily modified for each individual in your family or group. Let the kids pick their favorite author or storybook characters and run with it. Is your child obsessed with a particular show or book, then design your costumes around it.

Curious George family costume

Curious George Theme

For example my son adored Curious George for the longest time, so a themed family costume was a no brainer. We even made a backdrop for our churches trunk or treat and passed out candy. Living in Michigan’s unpredictable weather, it’s always beneficial to opt for warm and cozy costume. This adorable monkey costume makes the perfect Curious George, including the cutest banana.

Little Red Riding Hood

This popular Little Red Riding Hood Costume and Big Bad Wolf Costume are adorable for siblings. Plus it’s one of the easiest costumes for dads and moms to recreate.

Who doesn’t have red plaid flannel in their closet for a woodcutter and a nightgown for the grannie. Just add a grey grandma wig and you’re set with your family costume.

Little Red Riding Hood Family Costume

The flintstones family costume

The Flintstones

Flintstones Theme

Nostalgic costumes about movies or storybook characters are some of the best to recreate and can be easily recognized. These throwback characters like the Flintstones are a fun way to share with your children oldies, but goodies. These DIY Flintstone costumes were created by my mother-in-law, but the Fred, Wilma, Bam Bam, and Pebbles costumes can easily be found online too.

Circus Theme Halloween Costumes

Most days parenting can feel like a 3-ring circus. So why not create your own costumes complete with a ring master, strong man, tight rope walker, lion, and concession girl with the sweetest peanut costume. This DIY baby carrier Halloween costume as a concession girl is a great way to keep younger babies warm while trick-or- treating.

Celebrity Couple Costumes

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce Halloween Costumes

A crowd favorite is dressing up as a celebrity couple. Fans are obsessed with one of the newest celebrity couples being spotted at games, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, or Traylor as they have been dubbed. This is an easy costume for sports fans for Halloween 2023.

Pregnancy Announcement Halloween Costume Idea

Pregnancy bump costume idea

Halloween can be one of the best times to announce your pregnancy to friends and family through a clever costume. Already sporting that adorable round bump, why not make it apart of your costume. This DIY bump costume only took a black sweatsuit and white paint.

Slogan Themes

Well known slogans and brands are recognized by everyone, which makes it a hilarious way to craft costumes. From the energizer bunny to Skittles-taste the rainbow there is no end to the outfit ideas.

Got Milk Family Costume

One of the most adorable and fitting costumes, especially for nursing mothers and breastfeed babies, is a GOT MILK Theme. A cozy cow costume for baby and a farm girl style outfit. Black electric tape on a white shirt is an easy way to write GOT MILK on a shirt. Utilizing a cardboard box, white and black paint to create a Milk Carton costume for my husband. That year we helped at our church’s trunk or treat and created a cardboard barn and used straw, and pumpkins to create a backdrop.

Costumes for Wagons or Strollers

Little toddler legs can get quite tired while walking from house to house. Incorporating a wagon, stroller or wheelchair into a costume can be a clever way to add interest and be practical. A simple covered wagon was a fun added prop for a Western theme family costume. Our prairie girl loved traveling in a covered wagon and it was one of the easiest to create. We finished up this DIY theme costume with a cowboy, rodeo clown, bull, and bull rider for a Western theme costume.

Your Favorite Sports Team

Do you have tons of sports gear, shirts and swag from your favorite sport’s team. After rounding up all our Michigan State gear this was a simple costume theme for our family complete with a football, cheerleader, football players, coach and referee.

favorite sports team family costume with coach, referee, cheerleader, football and football player

Favorite sports team family costumes

Take Photos Before Trick-or- Treating

Coordinating costumes definitely takes time. Make sure you capture all your efforts before you head out trick-or-treating, especially before kids crash after all that candy.

Too often we’ve made the mistake of waiting until afterwards to snap a picture. Attempting to get a photo of our family with a timer, combined with overtired children is never good. The picture speaks for itself!

After perusing these photos, I hope you found some inspiration to get your wheels turning. Tons of these ideas can be tweaked to create trunk or treat backdrops or camping themed decorations.

Well my friends, that completes our list of group costumes. Maybe this will spark your childlike imagination this Halloween season. We would love to know what is your favorite family costume that you’ve come up with? Don’t forget to Pin and Save this post and follow Discovering Anew on Facebook for more children’s activities, vacation guides, and Michigan camping recommendations. If you found this content helpful, share it with a friend. Happy Halloween! Hope it’s filled with tons of memories, laughs and, of course, candy.

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Marian Fink

Hi, I’m Marian. Writer, wife, and mother of 4 children, discovering anew the simple joys of life while exploring, camping and hiking.

http://www.discoveringanew.com
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