Mine isn't as dramatic as many, but it was memorable for me. It was my worst, best, and only night out in armor so far. A few years back, I decided to do my first armor costume, a sandtrooper, for Halloween. Was supposed to go as Peter Criss with my buddies as KISS, but seriously just could not shake the Star Wars bug.
I got a used FX stormtrooper armor kit from eBay, Master Replicas CE helmet, scratch-built a sandy backpack using ALICE backpack frame, seed trays, radio kit, tupperware, and my BFG was a mash-up of Nerf Longshot CS-6 and Hasbro DC-15.
Worked furiously on the researching, parts acquiring, building, and painting, and weathering in the weeks/days leading up to Saturday night/Halloween night, including all-nighter on Friday night and all day Saturday day. This was my first armor build. I didn't quite have the all the little sandtrooper parts just right like the ab plate, knee plate, etc. Installed two small fans in the helmet, assembled the armor parts with industrial velcro. The weathering was done with tempura paints, a tip I think I picked up on TK409's site.
Talked my wife into wearing an old X-Wing pilot costume I had previously made and made do with a couple of random bits. Good sport.
Come Saturday night, we were to meet our friends at a place that has a couple of bars/restaurants next to each other. Good friends, they were still talking to me after I bailed as the fourth KISS member.
Worked on costume til the last minute, loaded everything up, and we drove 1.5 hour to the pub to meet everyone for dinner and starting the night. Got there, began getting dressed in parking lot, then realized I had left the entire stormtrooper abdominal section in the basement at home (where I painted it). What could I do? There was only one choice, really - go back home and get it.
So, wife stayed, and I drove another 1.5 hour back to the house, grabbed the ab armor, and returned yet another 1.5 hour back to the pub.
Got dressed again in parking lot, backpack and BFG ready to go, and in I went to the pub, where dinner was long over and everyone was about to go to the bar next door for drinks/dance/costume party, where it was even more crowded.
Wow-o, what fun. From the beginning, I couldn't see, sit, eat, drink, pee, hear, or talk where people could understand me. My lenses fogged so bad and had dripping condensation, despite the two fans. I couldn't see more than a few feet in front of me, and had limited mobility with the armor, backpack, and blaster. One armor thigh kept dropping, and I forgot to better secure the chest, but otherwise the industrial velcro really held pretty well. I was so tired I was a little spaced but there was no way I was not going through with this after all of the work.
I had absolute freakin' blast, just amazing. It was the first time outside of a private party that I had "trooped," I guess you could say. People wanted photos with me, people came to talk to me, got photos with a few random Star Wars characters, and so on. Thankfully, the blurs of the orange flightsuit and white helmet of my wife's X-wing pilot stood out enough through the foggy lenses and the dark bar that I could follow her around. I was so thirsty, hungry, sweating, and badly wanting to sit down.
Duct tape KISS got schnockered. Paul Stanley was about 5'7". Ace Frehley's shoulder pads were like 3-ft or more wide and kept poking people. At the after-party, Gene Simmons later laid down in the driveway and wouldn't move, then puked inside, and finally laid down again in a tiny half-bathroom, impossible to move.
What an awesome night it was, despite all the trouble.
Random comments that night: "Why is it dirty?" "Are you in the 501st?" "Can I get a picture with you?" "Where's Peter Criss?" "Can you see?" "Did you make that?," though many comments (and my replies) just sounded like "Mffmmm hhmrr mhrrm fmmrhh hhmmurmm"
Here are some photos:
You can see the condensation in the helmet lens, it made the eyes look all glitterly in photos.
A little bit of the backpack and blaster rifle. My right thigh was the one that kept dropping. Check out the shiny TK boots - I had just got them and didn't have the heart yet to dirty them up.
This is one of my all-time favorite photos. Good times, good times...