By Emma Melvin
A party princess is an event-based job, often hired for children’s birthday parties to dress up and act as a fictional character. The performer usually does activities such as facepainting, balloon twisting, games, and dancing to music based on the character.
I have been performing for this job for 8 months and I really enjoy it, mainly because it combines 3 things I love; cosplay, theatre, and children. Additionally, I get to work as different characters, so each party is a bit different.
Most of the requested characters through the company I work for (I am Princess Parties), are disney princesses. The main ones being Elsa, Ariel, Tinkerbell, Belle, and Rapunzel. My personal favorite character to work as is Rapunzel, as it was my childhood favorite princess and I remember the plot the best.
Princess party companies do not just offer Disney princess characters, but a variety of other characters as well. This includes fairies, pirates, Christmas elves for the holiday season, unicorn inspired princesses, as well as a variety of other characters relating to movies, shows, or video games.
A local party princess from the Bay Area; Gianna Ariente started performing as a party princess in April 2025. She says, “I joined this company because I always wanted to play Disney characters in Disneyland, but never wanted to do the full move. I love this job’s flexibility as well as seeing the bright faces of the children. My favorite character to play is Moana, her story and persona is fun and reminds me a bit of myself so I am very comfortable playing her.”
Dulcinea Dumont opened her company, I am Princess Parties in 2020. She says, “I opened the company because of the joy it brings, where you can inspire children to connect to that magical feeling. I have performed since I was a child, as my father was a magician and clown. I was always fascinated by the excitement of the shows and I would help out with facepainting and balloon twisting. After I had kids, I wanted to inspire children to connect to magic through mindfulness with their beloved characters.”
Doing princess parties is typically not a full time job, as it relies on events to pop up. However, it is still a fun job to do part time on the weekends. In my personal experience, I would consider this job one of my main hobbies and I have enjoyed dressing up and playing a character to inspire younger children.
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