The Ins and Outs of Party Planning

I am by no means a professional party planner, but I do play one in my fantasy world...

Ways to get inspired for party ideas:

Pick a theme. What the guest of honor likes will usually give you a big clue. For instance, when I would plan baby shower's for our church members I would find out the theme of their nursery and use that as the theme for the baby shower. That way in case there are any decorations or favors they love and want to take home they will look perfect in the room!

The internet. The internet is by far the largest resource for party ideas. A few of my favorites are marthastewart.com, plumparty.com, birthdaypartyideas.com, ilovelollipops.com, hostesswiththemostess.com. And then there are blogs, there are some mighty talented people out there with lots of cool ideas, just type in a topic and you will be on your way!

Start with the most grandios ideas you can think of. I learned this trick while doing wedding floral consultations with brides. Think of everything you could possibly think of that would make your event a dream. and I mean everything. the crazier the better. Now write them all down. It is easier to start at the top and work your way backwards (eliminate) than it is to start from the bottom up.

For example, for my daughter's Cinderella party I thought of a horse and carriage. Way out of the budget so I began to think of other ideas and came up with borrowing a friends horse for free (a really really nice friend by the way) and having Prince Charming riding on it carrying Cinderellas glass slipper on a pillow.

Or there was the Thomas the Train train party when I had Sir Topham hat himself come to pass out the party bags. My husband happens to be bald and look like him when wearing a top hat and a navy blue suit.

Or there was the Ironman vs. Transformers party. We found 2 people that let us borrow their sports cars to park in the driveway. One was a yellow convertible corvette (a Transformer) and the other was a silver corvette (like Ironman's sportscar). FREE. For a bonus they took the birthday boy for a ride.

And there was the pirate party. Along with the party invitation I sent each child a key. They were to bring the key to the party, they didn't know why (and I had extras in case they forgot). Sent them on a treasure hunt and once they found the treasure trunk each child tried their key to see if they could open it (oh the anticipation was killing them). And low and behold the birthday boy's key opened it and it was filled with candy and toys.

Have a plan. Figure out how your party will play out before hand. This is very important. You must keep the party moving along, especially for children. Have your activities planned out. And if there is extra time at the end of the party that's fantastic, but at least no one is sitting around for 3 hours waiting for the guest of honor to open their gifts in case they need to leave.