8 Simple Party Planning Tips
Anyone else love to throw a good party out there? Over the years, we started throwing a couple parties a year and have learned we love doing it. Why? We love throwing a party because we love having worlds collide and that’s what happens when you bring people together. But, hosting a party, whatever the motive, can be A LOT of work. We’ve learned a few tips along the way after doing this for a few years that have helped us simplify hosting parties a ton.
- Include Your Guests – We have turned our parties into potluck style. We invite people to bring a side or dessert to share and let the food be what it is. It’s different every year based on what people decide to bring. Back when, we did a few parties where we told people that we had it all covered, but most people still brought stuff. Guests like to contribute, so now we just incorporate it as part of the culture of the event and it takes a lot of pressure off of us as hosts.
- Go for bbq – and not with a grill. A few years back we got the idea to order pulled pork bbq from a local restaurant. What’s great about this is that neither of us have to stand in front of a hot grill all day and people can eat whenever they want. We put the meat in a crock pot and put the setting on “warm” and then we can chat with people and not worry about hte food all night. Bonus: pulled pork freezes well to use for future meals or events. Sometimes, we even send guests home with any leftovers.
- Bulk Shopping – As much as I hate Costco, I do love having a stock of paper plates, cups, spoons, and napkins.
- Coolers of drinks – We set out four or five coolers full of various beer, fruity drinks, canned lemonade, and Capri Suns. Fill them with ice and they stay all day. We also put out three or four bottle openers on each cooler so that it’s easy for people to open their drinks. Also, Capri Suns are a fun drink for the kids and not surprisingly, many adults love them as an option too.
- Use Evite/Facebook. We use a combo of these two tools to invite people because we honestly don’t have email addresses for everyone. Then, there are folks who we have email addresses for, but aren’t friends on Facebook. Either way, we have a digital way we communicate all the event details. Keeps me sane, for sure!
- Return what you don’t use. Every year after our party, I end up returning two or three bags of buns, packs of Hershey bars, graham crackers, and other miscellaneous things. While you can’t return everything, it’s nice to get some of these food items out of the house.
- Stay Casual – Inevitably, you will have people show up who didn’t rsvp and you’ll have people flake on you at last minute and not come. We typically try to plan parties that are flexible like this because we know that that’s just how life is sometimes. Teh only exception to this was when we hosted a murder mystery party, and based on having “parts” in the story, folks had to rsvp. And, people understood that and actually embraced that party a ton. More on that another day…
- Take Notes – Take note of how much ice you had to buy, how much meat you needed, how many people actually showed up, etc. That will make things easier if you do a similar event in the future.