I’ve wanted to go to the Elfia festival since I first heard about it a couple of years ago. For various reasons, I didn’t manage to go until this year. Elfia is a fantasy themed festival, where people come dressed in all kind of costumes, use their imagination and skills to create fantastic characters. Although I am not an active cos-player, I am a big fan of fantasy movies and books, and the idea of going to a costume festival brought a spark to my eye. Not to mention that the location of this festival is perfect: Kasteel de Haar, a castle surrounded by gardens and forest, close to Utrecht.

“Elfia is a festival that is focused on the expression of dreams” – that’s it is described on Elfia’s website.

I really liked this description. Although many costumes are inspired from fantasy movies, there are a lot based on each person’s imagination, giving the festival a dream-like feel. My costume was not very elaborate: just a purple wig and fairy wings. Compared to the costumes I’ve seen, it was almost nothing. But I still enjoyed being a fairy, dressed in jeans, for one day! I loved the festival, I was constantly charmed by beautiful people, interesting or scary costumes – my friends must have been annoyed that I constantly stopped to take pictures, but they humoured me and we all had fun in the end. I was pleasantly surprised to see people of all ages there, entire families with small kids, all dressed up, even dogs and owls accompanying their humans.

It was a great day and I hope I will go there next year as well, maybe this time wearing a proper costume 🙂

The gallery below is only a small selection of pictures, but if you want to see more, you can check this FB album.