The crowds never really bothered Evelyn. She’s kind of a ham and likes attention, so people asking for pictures made her day, plus she could show off her roaring or whatever the character did. She did get nervous during the kids costume parade (she was 3 at the time) and kind of flopped on to the floor in the “child’s pose” in front of everyone, but it was still cute.
Our cosplaying actually began while my husband was on his last deployment when I saw the G4 coverage of San Diego and I saw all of the amazing cosplays for the first time and I remember telling my husband all about it while he was gone. We had been to Emerald City in 2008 but it was WAY small then and I didn’t remember any cosplay.
Anyways after he got back our daughter, Evelyn was born. We took her to her first ECCC in 2011 when she was 5 months old. I really wanted to start into cosplay because I love to dress up and play pretend but was scared to do it by myself and I didn’t have any “skills”. I bought myself a Leia dress and a yoda for Evelyn so I wouldn’t be alone, but I didn’t end up wearing it because i wasn’t happy with it (the hair…ugh). She was still Yoda and was quite cute. The year we did Jurassic Park, I managed to persuade my husband to do it with me too, because he could be a baddass and have a cool gun. He had lots of fun and was hooked. Every year since then we’ve done some sort of cosplay, each year trying to expand and learn new skills.
After Jurassic Park, my husband did wreck-it ralph with Evelyn (as Wreck-It Ralph and Vanellope), I was originally going to be in there too, but I was uber pregnant, so I ended up being a very pregnant Neo Queen Serenity. Last year (and for ECCC this year too) we did Back to the Future II, our youngest, Clara, was Marty Jr, Evelyn was the hoverboard girl, my husband was Griff and I was Spike from Griff’s gang. We always try to do something to incorporate the whole family, and fun.
Cosplay has given us something fun and creative to do with the family (Evelyn likes to help paint). Plus we have amazingly unique family portraits now.