Belle and Prince Adam Costume

My daughter and son live Disney. And we love the elctical light parade! Belle and the Beast are not in the parade so what where their costumes look like if they were. I started with Belle's dress. Took me about 8 months to finish. I first drew up the idea. Then started ordering what I needed. LED lights in the states are expensive like 50-90 cents a piece but I planned on about 500 lights so that wasn't in the budget. I ordered all the LED lights from China and took about 2-3 weeks to get there but they cost pennies each so it was worth it. I started with a cotton muslin layer for the skirt and on top of that is faux taffeta on the cotton part I drew out my lighting plan. What color lights going where running which wires where. An all my chalk was color coded as well. I poked each LED light through the fabric. That's what took the longest along with wiring it all. I used Sauter on all my connections. Having to be VERY careful not to burn the dress. In the piping of the dress I used EL wire and this is also what I used to make the rose on the front of the dress. The top part of the dress is brocade fabric also ordered from China. And Prince Adam vest is made from same fabric. EL wire needs a converter to power the wire and most either plug into a wall or are battery power. The dress is powered by large lipo battery packs ordered from China as well and rechargeable. But I didn't want to be climbing under the dress to turn everything on and off. So I ordered a USB converter and cut off the USB end and sliced the power wires to hard wire it to all the other connections. And one on and off push button at the base of her bodice that she could use to turn her dress on and off. The battery was housed in a hidden pocket that I made on the liner if the skirt in the back of the dress. I also wanted the red lights in the front of the dress to swirl. I learned arduino code just for this costume and got arduino mega 2650 board to power the main swirly lights. And used a couple arduino lilypad boards for the random twinkling lights. As far as the pattern for the dress I used a vintage Belle pattern with slight modifications. For my sons costume I used a Uncle Sam patter but just changed the collar on the jacket. I used a vibrant blue velvet. His coat has the same EL Wire used as piping all along the edge so he glows as well and the gold strip down the side of his pants is actually EL Tape. A flat version of EL wire. To get it he right color I had to use a orange color clear vinyl tap over the EL tap. His costume only took me a week or two to make. Way less soldering and light connections. There is an inside pocket in his jacket that had the battery his only took 9 volt for the jacket and another 9v for the pants. The battery was in the pocket of the pants. Bell's Dress probably cost a total of $200-250 in materials. And Prince Adam cost about $75ish. I didn't count how much time spent but hundreds and hundreds of hours and lots of love went into making these costumes. They were 100% made from scratch!