Thread: Tell me about your party/haunt themes?

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I am dead set this year for our annual Halloween gathering, to be themed Scary Tales or Twisted Tales, which if you haven't guessed, would be an homage to the classic fairy tales we all grew up on...gone wrong! I'm super excited and have been scheming now for a little over a month. Thus far we've done Haunted Mansion, Vampires, and Sleepy Hollow in years back! We're REALLY looking forward to this year as I have had this theme on the "back burner" since the first year we did this.

I do plan on putting up some pic and instructionals from last year's Sleepy Hollow Ball but I have to find the time.

Two others that we have loving to try in the future are.. Zombie Prom and Pharoah's Tomb (O GOD THE PROPS!)

I am a true believer in NOT mixing themes but try every year to adapt everything to fit without putting my ghost props in with my alien props etc.

I want to hear about some themes from other event planners and haunters... what was a hit? What was a miss? What themes were a logistical nightmare? What was REALLY fun? What was REALLY scary!

Nothing to add but that I would love to see some pictures of the sleepy hollow set up.
For me I have never themed my party till this yeat and tha party theme is spiders.My yard haunt is pirates.

That sounds cool! This year I am doing the zombie theme in the grave yard, camping trip gone wrong on the side of the house and in the garage the dungeon of horrors.

Halloween 71 if you are interested in the Sleepy Hollow theme we got the idea from an HGTV "Halloween Block Party" special a few years back and they have some REALLY cool ideas. You can find it in it's entirety here: http://www.hgtv.com/video/halloween-...deo/index.html

I will have some photos up tonight of the set up from the last couple years. We mostly just used a lot of hay, pumpkins, and corn stalks for the Sleepy Hollow theme and leaned VERY heavily on "Tim Burton's" film so that we could have a witch's corner and country graveyard and utilize some of our existing props and decor. I did however get a photo tutorial up already of our evil scarecrow from last year.

bl00d. That "camping trip gone wrong" theme is REALLY unique and cool. I've never heard of anyone doing it!

I've been wanting to do a Sleepy Hollow scene for a while, but I just can't see doing a horseman standing around. I want him on horseback, but I've never found a full-size horse statue that can be taken apart and stored after Halloween.

Sleepy hollow sounds awesome, we just do a simple graveyard, smoking, red glowing coffin for a center piece. Our epitaphs are all corney, with a nod to disney. I do love the idea of a pirate theme also.

Originally Posted by star_girl_mag

Halloween 71 if you are interested in the Sleepy Hollow theme we got the idea from an HGTV "Halloween Block Party" special a few years back and they have some REALLY cool ideas. You can find it in it's entirety here: http://www.hgtv.com/video/halloween-...deo/index.html

I will have some photos up tonight of the set up from the last couple years. We mostly just used a lot of hay, pumpkins, and corn stalks for the Sleepy Hollow theme and leaned VERY heavily on "Tim Burton's" film so that we could have a witch's corner and country graveyard and utilize some of our existing props and decor. I did however get a photo tutorial up already of our evil scarecrow from last year.

bl00d. That "camping trip gone wrong" theme is REALLY unique and cool. I've never heard of anyone doing it!

Thanks for the link!

This year will be "Four Funerals and a Wedding", featuring the nuptials of a black widow bride and the funerals of her ex-husbands. This was supposed to be an easy year but it's not shaping up to be at all! I say that with love, as I think it's going to be a blast.

Next year will be the "Monsters' Ball," a Venetian masquerade for the undead. That display is going to be all kinds of insanity. I've picked up most of the props I "need" but there is going to be gobs of sculpting and propmaking if it's to look and feel the way I want.

Last year was the Seven Deadly Sins, a logistical nightmare. I loved most of the overall effect, but it turned out that even in this heavily Catholic area, few of the ToTs had any cultural awareness of the Sins. I was flabberghasted, as I assumed some basic awareness of the concept was part of Judeo-Christian cultural heritage regardless of one's actual religious beliefs. I also wimped out on what would have been the most pointed and effective vignettes, that of Wrath. Still, it had loads of detail and visually I'm quite proud of it.

In the past I've also done "The Wedding Banquet", which was thrown together in days after my planned theme fell through. Given the amount of time that went into preparing it, it was surprisingly effective.

"Wasting Away at the Midnight Margarita" was one of my personal favorites, with many mythological and literary characters joining traditional horror elements at a bar. As with the Sins, many of the references were lost on the ToTs, even my screamingly-obvious-or-so-I-thought Lord of the Flies pig head on a pike. Having an enthusiastic guide to the festivities saved my bacon on this one.

"Thanks for All the Monsters" was, in hindsight, a fairly generic Halloween display, but having only a handful of characters allowed time to set up all the animatronics and allow people to spend time with each of them - a situation no longer present in my increasingly overcrowded displays.

"Dead Man's Party" was my first big display, and as such has a very special place in my heart. Lots of small details in this one, and a very enthusiastic reception from ToTs back before I raised my own personal bar to impossible heights.

Originally Posted by BlueFrog

This year will be "Four Funerals and a Wedding", featuring the nuptials of a black widow bride and the funerals of her ex-husbands. This was supposed to be an easy year but it's not shaping up to be at all! I say that with love, as I think it's going to be a blast.

Next year will be the "Monsters' Ball," a Venetian masquerade for the undead. That display is going to be all kinds of insanity. I've picked up most of the props I "need" but there is going to be gobs of sculpting and propmaking if it's to look and feel the way I want.

Both of those are great ideas, BF. I particularly like the second, though. If I had a large house with a winding staircase, I'd definitely do something like that.

It was a twisted circus the last couple of years, a voodoo graveyard the prior two, and a jumbled cemetery all those before This year, I'm thinking of likely doing a dark harvest theme.

This year, I'm doing the same theme for both my haunt and party: Southern Swamp/Voodoo. The front porch and gardens will be transformed into a swamp and voodoo ceremonial area, and the inside of the house will be done up as an Old Southern Plantation house, only creepier! For the party I'm planning on showing the movies "The Skeleton Key" & "Zombieland". The food will be a Southern style buffet, and their will be plenty of Halloween-y desserts, and I'm even making my own soda, to be called "Zombie Joe's Hoodoo Juice"! For the party, I'll be going as Voodoo priest, and for the haunt, I'll go as a Hoodoo Zombie, complete with ghastly make-up, and tribal tattoos on my face. I personally can't wait!!!