Thread: Throwing 1st Halloween Party (need Advice)

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ok, so i have always wanted to throw a Halloween Party and i think this year I finally get to do it. Does anyone have any ideas or advice. How soon should I send out invites? What kind of activities should i offer? anything else I should do?

Spend some time browsing these pages. TONS of ideas and themes. When you get a specific idea, ask and you will get lots of responses. Think about type of party you want, size, theme, ages, etc.

This is the place for everything Halloween related! Welcome

ok, So my hubby and I turned our front living room into a home theater with an ancient Atlantis theme, so the walls are already covered in stones, columns, and It even has a fiver optic star ceiling.

So i figured on keeping to an Atlantis theme for a halloween but still keep it scary. Does any one have any ideas on what I can do?

How about Pirates thats an easy costume for people to put together. Have costume prizes helps make people commit. How about a Fish Fry?

Columns sound like a good excuse for an Ancient Greece theme! Hades, Medusa, Cerberus, etc. Lots of vines, snakes, fire. Have a room resembling the Underworld, with skeletons, lost souls, etc.

Food can be Greek-themed.. Dolmas, hummus and pita chips/veggies, orzo pasta salad.. Except with themed names, of course

I've thrown a few parties. One thing I do NOT recommend is playing a movie. It takes too long to rope people in and no one is going to really sit down and commit to it, especially since you are having a party, not a movie viewing.

That said, individual clips from different movies has really worked well for me. I made a set of DVDs, about 5 hours in length that had short scenes from dozens of different horror movies. Nothing violent or gory as everyone has different tastes. Just creepy, spooky, suspenseful. I also put titles in the bottom right corner giving the name of the movie and the year it was released (reboots and all). I would leave them playing in a 5 disc DVD player and it was always a big hit. Its great because people walking through or in the room can watch a scene or two, or as usually happens, sit around and talk about all the different movies I pulled clips from. Its a great conversation starter and exposes people to a lot of great movies. I've had guests ask to borrow specific movies after seeing a clip or two, movies they might have otherwise never seen.

It did take a while to put together, but every year I would add more and more clips to keep it current as well as paying homage to the classics. I did it all with a DVD ripper and a fairly inexpensive DVD editor program, but you could probably track down AMC's 100 scariest moments or something like that and play it too.

Good luck!

Oh one other thing that turned out to be a huge success and the real talk of the party for weeks. I hired a psychic to work one year. She came in costume and we set up something like a gypsy fortune teller tent in one room for her to have privacy and she gave people clairvoyant readings all night. I was a cop back then, and she really unnerved several of my police buddies. It was a lot of fun. It was expensive, about $500 for the night, but really worth it (if this is something you would be interested in doing that is). Most people had never gone to a psychic before (including me) and it was a chance to do something a little mysterious in keeping with the Halloween spirit.

i have actually been thinking about hiring a psychic for the party or haveing one of my friends do it. I did manage to send out some Save the Dates today, I still have plenty of time to plan.

Originally Posted by v_gan

Columns sound like a good excuse for an Ancient Greece theme! Hades, Medusa, Cerberus, etc. Lots of vines, snakes, fire. Have a room resembling the Underworld, with skeletons, lost souls, etc.

Food can be Greek-themed.. Dolmas, hummus and pita chips/veggies, orzo pasta salad.. Except with themed names, of course

Funny thing about that is that because of the theater i was even thinking of dressing up like Medusa and my Hubby was going to be Perseus.

Originally Posted by JohnnyD97

I've thrown a few parties. One thing I do NOT recommend is playing a movie. It takes too long to rope people in and no one is going to really sit down and commit to it, especially since you are having a party, not a movie viewing.

That said, individual clips from different movies has really worked well for me. I made a set of DVDs, about 5 hours in length that had short scenes from dozens of different horror movies. Good luck!

That is funny my Hubby is all ready working on piecing together a video on our computer, we have it setup where we can stream the video on our computer through the PS3 so he is making a horror movie montage that should last about 4 hours, the length of our party, and have Halloween music in the background.

But your right not anything to gory as I will have children at the party.