Color Guard on a Budget

(Make you, the judges, and your students happy!)

Many of us in the marching arts have been at the crossroads of wanting to create a highly effective color guard program but having concerns about keeping the budget in-check. You might be hoping that in the article I’m going to help you find “free, free, free!” but the reality is that free doesn’t always get you what you need. 

As a performer and instructor I’ve seen just about every version of budget availability with programs in my local Arizona circuit. I’ve learned a lot about how you *can* work on a budget without your color guard looking second-hand or under-dressed. Over the course of this article, I’m going to give you a few ideas to consider and some examples in how they are related to the big parts of your color guard budget: equipment, costumes, and props. 

At the end of this post, I’ll share some links of my favorite websites for finding affordable costumes and silks that still look great! 

Top Tips for Working with a Budget

• Pre-designed can be just right! 
  • You don’t need a custom-designed set of costumes or silks to have your color guard visually represent your show concepts. There are a dozen wonderful costuming agencies that have well-designed costumes and silks that are a part of their catalog (with set prices).
    
    Many of these websites even have a collection of affordable costumes that allow you to custom-pick colors that you can coordinate with your show theme. 
    
• Implied Design
  • A large amount of $$$ can be saved just by allowing your audience and judges to make inferences rather than giving them a concept point-blank with your costuming and design.
    
    For example, if you are doing a show based on the weather, you might not need custom-print silks with clouds and thunderbolts or happy silks with a light blue sky and clouds. Instead you could have a darker silk with bold yellow strips or effects on it in lieu of the lightning; or have the whole color guard spin a variety of white and light blue stock “practice” flags at a much lower cost per silk. 
    
• Long-term vs Short-term Value
  • When you are considering a purchase of something like new silks for a show, consider what will happen with them postseason.
    
    • Are you a program that continually resells props and equipment after the season is over? If that’s the case, then a very specific silk or set of props made with a higher quality (and higher amount of spending going in the front end) could help with the resale value.
      
    • What if you aren’t reselling? Consider the “weather” show from the previous example– you are much more likely to get a reuse in a future show if you choose a set of dark silks with yellow accents than if you had gone with the lightning bolt silk. Silks don’t necessarily have to be plain to be multi-use: simple designs like geometric prints or swirls can be used in many contexts. 
      
• Borrow/Share
  • Use your connections (and social media) to connect with other programs to borrow/rent/buy almost anything you could need for a fall program. Many circuits have a Facebook group where you can ask for certain items- remembering that the more specific you are about your needs, the better the chance of getting something.
    
    For example, “I’m looking for a set of 12 silks, preferably blue or green with a design” will get you more effective responses than, “I’m looking for a set of silks”. 
    
  • There are Facebook groups specifically for the resale/search of supplies for a fall season. The ones I’ve seen are called: Guard Closet, Color Guard Equipment Closet Sale, Prop Swap and Shop, Flags Swap and Shop.
    
  • Websites! Just like on Facebook, it’s another couple of places where people are selling unused equipment.
    • Theguardroom.com
    • guardcloset.com 
• Be fair to your boys/nonbinary
  • While things have improved considerably, the boys in many programs still face a stigma for participating in color guard. Don’t cause them further pain by putting them in a similarly colored button-up shirt and jazz pants just because ‘you couldn’t find a matching costume’. If the costume you are ordering doesn’t have a coordinated boys costume (or the boys one just doesn’t look as good as the girl’s costume), find another one! Many costuming companies have made significant improvements in their offerings for coordinated boy and girl costumes, so keep looking for the right fit for your program.
    
    • On a similar note, if your program has a variety of gender identities, then consider either a “one style fits all” or allowing students to opt into “the skirt version” or the “pants version” of the uniform. This allows students to have a little bit of control over something that could be very fundamental to their developing gender-identity.  

Budgeting for your fall program (which includes your color guard) can be a big headache, but there are ways to be cost-efficient. Whether it’s utilizing stock items from a professional company or borrowing from the school down the road, there are ways to build what you need out of what’s available. Adjusting how you visually design your show and considering the long-term value of a purchase can also affect how you view budgeting your color guard for the fall. 

If you are looking for specific recommendations, I’m providing links and descriptions of some of my personal favorites for finding affordable uniforms and silks. 

Holly’s Favorite Sites (these are not sponsored nor are we directly affiliated with these companies; these are Holly’s personal preferences/recommendations):

• Uniforms
  • A Wish Come True Color Guard
    • https://awctcolorguard.com/
      • This website has a wide-range of uniforms available (with many gender-neutral costuming options) AND their website is very easy to navigate. They have good search features have costumes in the range of $73-121 (which is in the standard range for “budget” costumes). AWCT also has many costumes in the range that can be easily customized to fit your needs. 
  • Creative Costuming and Design
    • https://www.creative-costuming.com/ 
      • The website also has a wide-range of uniforms (including gender-neutral) with easy search features. Their “budget-friendly” costumes are in a similar price range (75-125). Creative-Costuming has several costumes that come in multiple colors. 
• Silks
  • The Band Shoppe
    • https://www.bandshoppe.com/shop/color-guard-flags/in-stock-flags/in-stock-solid-flags/ 
      • This first link will take you to Band Shoppe’s “In Stock Solid Flags”- I love their wide-variety of simple (and affordable) silks for purchase with oodles of color options. Solid option silks in normal sizes (not the giant 10’ silks!) are all between $10 and $20.  My two favorites they offer on this page are the dropped rectangle silk in “36X”54 and the shiny yet strong ultra-lamé silk.
    • https://www.bandshoppe.com/shop/color-guard-flags/
      • This link will take you to the main page for all their silks, but I really do recommend perusing all the links for their silks. They have a wide range of very beautiful silks (including digitally printed ones and their StylePLUS collection with overlays on the digital silks) in the range of $25-$35 per silk.
  • McCormick’s
    • www.mccormicksnet.com/default.asp
      • McCormick’s offers an extremely wide range of silks and sells digitally printed silks for $30. Their sewn flags (which are more expensive due to additional labor in their creation) are beautiful and high quality. You can even customize the colors on the sewn flags!

We’d love to hear from you! Did these tips help? Do you have other resources/tips to share? Please comment, share, and help us start the conversation.