Witches, nurses and Homer Simpson will be joining the brides and grooms at Fiance for one more week.
A special Halloween section has taken over the downtown bridal boutique's basement and offers a wide variety of costumes, decorations and even food.
Debbie Harris, Fiance's owner, started the special section three years ago after walking into a Fargo Halloween store that was packed with people, which was intriguing to her.
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Customers and employees in Fiancée browse through Halloween costumes in the basement of the boutique Saturday afternoon. Along with costumes, Fiancée also sells a variety of Halloween decorations and even Halloween-themed food like pasta.
"And then I started doing research on it and found that Halloween is the number two holiday (after Christmas) in the United States," Harris said. "And when you go to market, it is amazing how huge the market is. (The) Halloween market is bigger than my bridal market and my prom market. It's huge, it's enormous."
The costumes Fiance sells are for an older age group, around 16 and up, and include Captain America, The Brady Bunch, Gumby, a garden gnome, The Simpsons, Dr. Suess' Cat in the Hat, pirates, police and Star Wars.
Jess Fockler of Fiance helped decorate the basement, and said it took a good week to get everything into place. Spiderwebs, LED lights and other surprises are in store for customers who walk down the darkened stairway, while yet more spiderwebs and a giant witch suspended from the ceiling greet all who are brave enough to venture into the basement.
Fockler said with all the variety of costumes they have, many customers still go for some old favorites like pirates, nurses and cops. Luckily for customers, there is plenty of variety even within a single type of costume.
"We get a lot of different pirates in, so we may buy 40 different pirates times three apiece," she said.
Alice in Wonderland is also a theme quite a few customers ask about, according to Fockler.
Fockler said they attend the costume market personally so they can feel the fabrics and see firsthand what the costumes look like. She said being able to feel the costumes to make sure they're comfortable is an important part of the process that separates Fiance from the larger retail stores that buy costumes in bulk.
"Wigs is a perfect example because it took us a long time to find a good wig that was less expensive but yet felt really nice," Fockler said. "So we're actually able to go and feel all these things and pick out (what's best)."
Perhaps even more important than the variety of costumes Fiance carries is the variety of sizes. Small, medium and large sizes might be good enough for children, but for adults three size options can be a little bit constricting.
"I think that if you asked 98 percent of the women out there, most of them would be a size 14 and up, which the costumes at the other places really aren't catering to," Fockler said, noting their costumes go up to size 4X. "So we have the same costumes, but in the plus sizes."
She said some Halloween costumes can run ridiculously small, so a size extra large might only be a size 8 in girls.
The Halloween section will run through Saturday, the day before Halloween, because Fiance is closed on Sundays. Harris said they will have a special sale on that final Saturday that will give 50 percent off the purchase of any 10 items or more, whether they be costumes, decorations or even the Halloween-themed food.
The Halloween section has been a really popular addition to Fiance, not only with customers, but with the employees as well.
"For us it's something different to do, it's a distraction from what we do 365 days a year," Harris said.