When I think of summer I think of a break from boring lectures, final exams, 15-page papers, and stress. It is a time to celebrate all of the hard work you completed in the past Fall and Spring semesters. Most importantly, it is a time to celebrate your family, friends, roommates, and colleagues who have completed their four years of High School or completed their College degrees and are preparing for the next big steps in their lives. What better way to celebrate than with a Graduation party?  I’d like to give you some ideas on how to throw a perfectly successful and outrageously fun party.

1.  Guest List:  Choose carefully which of your child’s friends you are going to invite to this party. You don’t want the party to get out of hand but you also don’t want the party to be boring. Also, it is a good idea to keep track of how many people are on the guest list between family and friends. 75-100 is the magic number, room permitting of course.

2.  Better to be safe than sorry:  Give your guests the option of staying indoors or outdoors at your party.  Order a tent just in case the weather is not as nice as you would have hoped. This way, your guests will be outside enjoying the (hopefully) nice weather but it is still their choice to be in the sun or not. Ordering a tent will help you avoid any unwanted stress. Plus, this will provide more room for your guests so they’re not crowded.

3.  Food:  It is not ideal for your guests to be starving the first three hours of your party. Bring the food out within the first hour that every one is supposed to arrive. This stirs up conversation and gives your guests energy for the rest of the party. Leave the food out for a while so if any stragglers come late they aren’t hungry or disappointed. Plus, later in the night, guests usually like to go for seconds.

4.  Drinks:  Alcohol is a big decision. At a High School graduation party it is important to remember that most of your child’s guests will be underage. If you choose to allow alcohol at your party, I would suggest hiring a bartender to serve as the “bad guy” to deny the young ones of any alcoholic beverages. For a College graduation party, most of the time everyone is of age but it is up to your whether you’d like to host an alcohol-free party or not. Make sure there is more than one type of drink.  For example, lemonade, soda, tea, light beer, wine etc.

5.  Be prepared: Think of all of the possible things that could go wrong at a party and find alternatives. Make sure all rentals and items your ordered  show up the night before the event or hours before to leave enough time to think of a solution.   If the cake you wanted says “Congratulations, Danny” rather than ‘Brian’, don’t sweat it.  Be prepared with cupcake/cake mix in your cabinet and ask some friends to come over and put them to work.  Nobody will even know the difference.

Hope you take my advice and have the most successful and memorable Graduation party you could possibly give your child!

-Summer 2011 Intern, Amanda

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 7th, 2011 at 4:21 pm and is filed under Event Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.