How early do you start planning?

Oops, I think I posted this in the wrong category, I'm sorry. Noob here.

Well it is about planning your costume so maybe the right Category.

But for me it depends on whether I am going to buy one or make it and when I finally decide on a theme. Most of the time it is September.This year I knew in July. But I also have in planning next years Theme and costume. Because it might be something that will require alot of work.

My kids usually start the day after Halloween. We usually put them together from found items or make it ourselves. My youngest loves Ninja Turtles, so we buy him his because of time constraints. I try to have everyone finalized by the beginning of September.

That is ideal. LOL

I'm improving on last year's costume so i've had ideas of things to change since then, but I only started to put real thought into it starting in the last half of september. However I already have plans for next year. I thought of a variation I could do.

when I was a kid in the 80's I WISH we had the money to plan to do elaboriate costumes for halloween

September 1st....If not earlier...I have ideas for next year already!

Sometimes I plan a year plus in advance. I do some pretty intricate costumes though usually they are for cons not just Halloween. This year? Sunday oct. 18th I decided to do a costume from the game Skyrim and got it done in 5 days mostly because I already had everything on hand to make it. At the other end this year for GenCon I went as a Tiefling Warlock and I worked on that for about 9 months.

Typically I plan my costume and decorations throughout the month of October. I'm never actually prepared. So this year, I'm planning everything in advance starting now. From costumes to decorations. I'm going to make the props and get the costume ready so come October I can just set everything up and be done. This year, I threw on some cargo pants, black steel toe boots, a black shirt with a black under shirt, I bought an apron that I smeared with blood and I made my own mask with paper mache. Not the greatest idea considering I live in Florida and the humidity and breathing into it made it all sticky lol.

I'm currently planning 11 months ahead haha. >_> I'm not crazy!

I usually start thinking about what I'm going to do for the next year right after Halloween is over. I would usually start the costume build a couple of months ahead of time but this year I'm starting today!
I've always wanted to do Lord of Darkness from Legend or something similar.
I did a decent Gargoyle Warrior with articulating wings which I loved having on a costume. It just creates a great wow factor when people ask to take your picture and you pop out these great wings that span out like 10' or so.
My wife and I recently watched Childhood's End and my jaw dropped when I saw the Korellan character. That character had the wow factor and fantastic wings!
So I thought I might give it a try!
Going to start planning out a new support system for the wings and upper torso muscle structure, then build another set of digitigrade stilts(have them on the gargoyle) before building the head and horns.
Here we go!

I start planning here in January/February. Might as well get a good headstart

Dang, Kramer, that is impressive!

I started planning my costume for 2015 about a month early, and I ended up scrapping it completely because I didn't have enough time to finish it. This year I already know what I want to do, and I'm already on the lookout for fabrics that can suit it.

I'm always planning. I start the day after Halloween, when I hit as many Spirit Halloween and Party City stores as I can. I try to find cool ideas with the pieces I pick up on the cheap, then start putting it together as the year goes on. As a result, I tend to end up with 3 or 4 costumes at a time, in various stages of completion.

Last year we started planning in July, that gave the kids enough time to really decide on the theme as we really don't want any changes after we've started. This year, we started working on things right after Halloween (second week of November) because we felt confident enough that we're going to stick with our theme, and since our Halloween celebrations have grown bigger, we need more time so we can do things at our leisure and as the schedule will allow it. Costume work starts early September when most props/decor are either done or are well on their way