Peach's Guide to a Perfect Party

Okay let's get one thing out of the way: Nothing ever goes off perfectly. The key thing is to be able to roll with whatever flaws do happen. Sometimes you gotta think on your feet other times you have to be able to laugh something off. Above anything just DON'T STRESS!

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I read once in a book that the key to a great party was not to stress over little details and over-plan. Now for me that doesn't work. I'm not saying I over-load myself last minute (okay sometimes I do) and plan huge elaborate parties, but big parties on small budgets are my thing.

For me half the fun of a party is the planning and design stage. Regardless of whether I'm planning our annual interactive murder mystery, secret Santa, birthday party or just a fun get-together I always get an outline of what the party is going to look like. This generally includes a preliminary guest list, color scheme, theme, dress code, and what food, if any, I'm serving. After going through and deciding those things I start focusing on other things like activities obviously our clue parties are one giant activity but we also do photo shoots there and all sorts of little details. I'm going to skip over those things because I have whole blog posts dedicated to those parties.  For  now I'm going to guide you through the other aspects and details of parties and I'm going to assume you can coordinate color schemes and activities.

Invitations and Thank You Notes: I have decided that these are pretty similar. They are the only thing outside of your actual party that relate to it. Your invitations are the first thing your guests see. They are the first impression for to the overall atmosphere of your party. For example if you send out dollar store "You're Invited" invitations with confetti on theme and the basic writing inside with blanks for your own information, you're guests see that you are throwing a laid-back birthday party. If you send out layered cards with fancy writing that's all typed nicely and is designed to say what it says your guests see that its more of a formal affair and would gather they need to dress nicer. Now if it's a clue party we also include a little note on a separate card with some additional information like dress code, official theme name and whatnot. Basically your invitations and thank you notes should also match the theme. They should hint at what the party is going to be like. For example if you were throwing a child's birthday party and it was Frozen themed the invitations might have snow flakes, ice and Olaf on them. They may also be blue and say frozen. The same applies to thank you notes. The key difference is wording invites will generally be generic words that are the same for everyone. Thank yous on the other hand should be personal. People want to know you care and were paying attention. If you received gifts at the party have someone sit down and write who gave the present and what it was so later you can refer to this and send the right thank yous to people (something I picked up from my mom).

Decorating and Theme: It's not like the theme just stops with the invitations and your guests are expected to imagine that the location alone totally fits the theme. Even if it's a dinner party and you don't have an elaborate theme you still may want to set out nice vases and napkins and a good table-cloth. Once I threw a girls lunch and it was all just very rustic. I had a burlap table runner and some purple printed cloth napkins in mason jars with straws and silver wear. It was nice because it fit the look I was going for. If your theme is more of an experience go with things you may find there. We had a cop -themed murder mystery once and we set up our space to look like a crime scene- just not super gory. Again with the frozen party you may have streamers in coordinating colors and things with Anna and Elsa hanging around the space. It doesn't necessarily need to be expensive.

Your Table Set Up: This is one of those things that I feel like deserve it's own section. Simply because it ties into decoration but it also has it's own practical element to it. Big fancy parties with hundreds of people would be better off renting everything from the tables and chairs themselves to the plates, linens, and eating utensils. For that kids party we've been talking about you might buy paper plates and cups that are frozen themed and get plastic silver wear in a coordinating color. For a smaller dinner party you may have nice dishes in your cupboard already that you can use. But it also depends on clean up preferences. If you don't mind doing dishes use the real stuff. If you just want to toss it get nice-looking paper plates. We sometimes get square paper ones to look like real plates but not have worry about clean up. If you're throwing nicer parties more often or have a nice annual party you may want to consider buying a set of plastic dishes that look fancy that you can wash and reuse. We found a set at a local grocery store. It's $10 per set and we're thinking of getting two sets. So for $20 we'll have plates and silverware for  several parties and if one of our friends does drop it it wont be as likely to break. Plus if it does break it's not the end of the word because it was plastic. If you don't want to deal with that there are plenty of disposable ideas at the dollar stores and party supply stores. As for chairs and tables, if you rent a space you may be able to use there tables and chairs for no additional cost, If you need more they may have some for rent at with a fee. If you are using your own space you probably have a table and chairs if not maybe look into investing in a folding ones? The other thing that goes along with that is table cloths and runners. Those just use your best judgment on, keep clean up in mind as if  you are using your own table cloth you will have to wash it later.

Guest List and Seating: I've always felt like these two things were kind of the same problem. You have to figure out who you want to be invited THEN if you have a fancy-er party you have to figure out how to seat everyone in a way that avoids conflict. I have a small file on our Clue parties and a whole section is dedicated to who has conflicts with who and what people I can and can't sit next to each other. It's actually gotten that complicated (that's just our friend group though). The thing is you have to know which of your guests, if any, don't like each other. For example I have these two friends who used to be close but now can't even tolerate each other. It's actually bad enough to where I have to seat them on opposite sides of the room. But I HAVE to know that or else we could have a repeat of our senior skip-day trip- trust me that was a disaster. If you don't know there is a conflict between guests and you find out mid party handle it calmly and try to maneuver seats if at all possible. If they cause a scene just remember it isn't wrong for you to ask them to leave-it's your party. Most likely they'll just calm down and suck it up.

Party Favors and Prizes: To me this is the fun stuff. For kids parties favors can just be things that make noise and candy plus maybe some cute toys from the dollar store in a little cellophane bag. But what about for adults? Well let's be honest here, candy is still totally an option just make sure, like with children, you take allergies into consideration. But cute little toys? Generally no. Some fun things we have done/ would do are: shot or other drink glasses, plaques or certificates, or $5-10 gift cards to itunes for winners. For party favors this year we are doing personalized flashlights, but we've also done key chains, and fun photos.

Food and Drinks: Are you serving a meal? What about just doing nibbles? Are you even planning on feeding your guests? In my experience food is a great way to get people to mingle. Just check with your guests ahead of time about dietary restrictions. If you have lots of guests you may want to consider labels for all your food and drinks so people know if they need to stay away from certain things. What about drinks? Not gonna lie we have totally just stuck with two-liters for more casual affairs but we've also made fun mocktails for our guests at parties too. An idea we came up with this year was to have an "open bar" it was really more for laughs because we're having a 20's themed party of sorts and we're all underage. We'll be serving pre-mixed mocktails to our guests with fun names. As for our food we usually do a full blown meal but this year we are opting for a soup and to have little nibble-y things laying around for guests to eat. Food is something that will eat up a budget fast- pun completely intended. So if you are planning on a lot of guests and you have a smaller budget you may consider opting for munchies laying around the room or if you are insistent on a meal go for something like vegetarian pasta dish that can feed a lot of people easily. Chicken is also pretty cheap so if you want meat it's a great option. I think last year I chose my moms pasta salad and  pigs in blankets since it was more casual and a really cheap fun meal.

So that just about sums it up. I know it's a lot of information but that's what I think is important. For me the key is in the details. I appreciate when someone pays attention to the little things. Just don't stress yourself out over things. The party isn't going to be any fun if the host can't relax and enjoy it too. That goes for kids parties relax and keep an eye on the kids. It's all going to be awesome...as long as everyone is having fun.

until next time,
Courtney and John

Peach's Party Filing

Okay so more like Organizing and filing. I wasn't joking about having a file for our clue parties. I actually have one. It looks like this:

However you don't need one of these for this post to be relevant. This is simply the basic information I use to organize a party. I just happen to need a file since all this material is not readily available on a blog for me to check out any time I want to...*hing hint...new party being posted in a few months!*


But I'm not going to go into how I made it my filing system. What I am going to go into is how I organize my clue parties. Now this is a little different from planning. In the planning stage I get to play with invitations, thank yous, guest lists, prizes and all sorts of fun crafty things.  This is a little less crafty, although I still get to be creative so it's okay.

When we open up my filing box you see this:

 

There are eight different sections for me to keep track of everything I need to know.  I'm only going to go over four of those sections. The other four are pretty much just what they sound like. Available names is just pre-made notecards with different aliases so I don't have to think too hard if we're adding another new guest. Banned/disqualified guests are just that, and past themes and future themes are either themes I've done or want to do. So let's get into the stuff that actually needs a little elaborating.




Invited/Returning guests: I keep the new guests in front so I can check at a moments notice and all returning guests go behind them. Now I have personal information on actual people in this section so I can't show it to you. But basically I have the persons name, mailing address, phone number and if they have a facebook. This is so I can contact them if I need to get an RSVP, send invitations and thank yous by mail, or update someone via text about the party if they aren't able to participate in facebook conversations. I also have their color/alias on their card so I don't have to search through names. That is really more to help me. For this you probably wont need more than a guest list with corresponding aliases and a phone number for each guest.



 


Current Party Data: This section is where I keep all my clues. I have each clue color coordinated by type then numbered. The numbers are for my easy-cleanup. I write down on each clue where they are located in the room as I hide them. This just makes it easier to find. What I'll do is put sticky notes on the front of each card. You can just print out the clues and write all of that information with a pen  if you wanted to use my clean up system. The other thing that is in this section is everyone alibis. These cards are made a lot like the guest cards except they just have the alias on them. I tape the alibi onto the back of the card so I can use the same card next year. Again you can just print these out and write names next to them.





 

Conflicts Between Guests: This is where it gets a little interesting. You may not need any information on this unless some of your guests don't get along. The problem I see is that our guests get a little too into character and start becoming mean to each other. We started recording these incidents so we would know in the future if someone was repeatedly doing this and if we should continue to invite them if they are hurting our other friends feelings. This is also the section where we record who we can and can't sit next to who because we do have some friends who just don't get along. It's mostly to avoid conflict.

Current Party Information: So unlike current party data, the information is things that are more relevant to the theme, so research that I may need to make it more realistic, relationship webs so I can keep track of characters, the story we write every year for our guests. I also keep our donation log and RSVP list there.

Which brings me to the last thing I wanted to bring up: Funds. Money is not readily available to everyone and parties like this can be expensive. So while I hit sales year round in preparation for this event we also recently started asking our friends if they would be willing to put a little money toward it. We decided on a suggested $5 per person and it was by no means necessary. This will be the third year in a row we've done this so we have a group of adults who are excited about this party and want to see it happen. Two years ago we wouldn't have asked this simply because they wouldn't have been interested in a party they weren't sure about.We're okay asking now because we know our particular group wants this event to happen and it's something we all look forward too. We don't like to ask for money but our friends also understand it's expensive and they want to help in any way they can. We really appreciate that and we don't take any of that for granted.

So that's all I've got for this post. Hope this helped you!

-Courtney

Or Maybe Not...

Remember 4 months ago when we went our seperate ways? Yeeaahhh, that apparently didn't last. We're back!! Youtube videos will resume shortly, we're just in the process of moving into a bigger place. Yep we're moving in together after just about 3 years. So while posts may become kind of spotty they will have a normal schedule as soon as things settle down. This is going to be kind of a short post but we've been super busy with the moving preparations, work and re-building our relationship because we obviously want to keep that a priority. :)

Until Next time,

Courtney and John.