Party Planning Checklist Essentials
Dear Friend,
Having a sound party planning checklist can help you in your quest to have a great event. All around the world, people get together for parties. You can be in South Africa, New Zealand, Montreal, New York or Dallas Texas, and you will find people love to get together with others to have a good. Some do it to celebrate a success. A mortgage burning party, a wedding reception is nothing more than a big themed party.
In college things used to be much easier. You’d simply invite over a few friends. Have someone bring drinks, or pizza and you’d be partying. That was very basic. As we’ve aged and gotten on in life, the expectations of the guests are higher. The demands on their time and yours has increased greatly. This means that not everyone will be able to join in on your event.
The most important thing we have is T I M E. Ben Franklin once said, “Doest thou love life? Then do not squander time, for this is the stuff life is made of.”
Those words are very profound. Look at them closely. They offer to you the reason why we need to get together with others even more. Because life is limited to the time YOU have and that is it. When it is over, it is OVER!
The party planning checklist can help stream line the process and keep you on task. This can be boiled down to three major decisions you have to make as the organizer.
1. You need to decide the type of party you are organizing. Is it for a retirement event? Is it a graduation? A birthday? A wedding anniversary? These are very obvious questions but you would be amazed at how many thousands of people just rush off in a million different directions.
If you are throwing a party and will include adults and children, just what activities will you have on hand for the children? Children have active imaginations. They need something to do that won’t be boring. Or you need to have enough activities to go around for the amount of children that will be there.
If you are having mixed guests, will you have food appropriate for all involved? The reality of many peoples health challenges are that millions have dietary restrictions. You surely cannot think of everything and make accommodations for all of them. But you can make your selections of foods favorable for the majority and have alternative dishes or foods for diabetics for example. Low to no salt, minimum sugar and spices sounds bland. But if the majority of your guests cannot eat the foods, this makes for a boring party.
2. Your second major decision is how you will invite your guests to the event. Some use online databases others will use a service called evite. It is a hugely successful website that manages your invitations, RSVP’s and helps you coordinate the event. You should check it out if you want an easy way of doing this.
If you are going to go the mail a paper invitation or get on the phone route it is often best to make a guest list. This will save you time, irritation (oh, I already called you, sorry you cannot come), and ultimately money. Lets be honest here. No one has an unlimited budget for parties. Even if you did, it would be better to spend it wisely and with prudence.
3. Your third major decision is with regards to where your party is going to be held. Renting a hall or banquet facility will have to be budgeted for. And you may not be able to get the space on the day when you want the event. So, your initiations must be delayed until you lock down a date.
If you are going to use your home, will it accommodate the guests and their children? If you need wheelchair access, is your home already configured to handle that demand? And don’t forget the dreaded clean up. Hiring this out may be the best decision you’ll ever make.
There is so much that is involved in having a good time. It is a lot of work for some people. Others know the power of delegating tasks from their party planning list to the right people. Nevertheless, there is a lot more that we need to get into before your big event, but with the information above, you can definitely get started. Plato said that is the most important thing, the act of getting started.
