Planning The Best Christmas Party

Party planning can be extremely stressful. There's so much you have to take into account. Since there's so much to do, I think it's perfectly reasonable to start prepping for the festivities really early on - even during October. Here are the things I am taking into account when planning my Christmas party. 

Creating a Guest List

Firstly, start with how many people you want to have. Is it a small, intimate soiree or is it a larger affair? Then pick a nice mixture of people so everyone knows someone and won't feel left out, but also have room to mingle. Think about whether you're going to allow people to bring +1s or their significant others. Make sure that people are aware of that. For our party, Johnny and I will invite a mixture of our friends including my uni friends, his work friends and my blogging friends (even though they're scattered about the country - and globe!) and so it's unlikely many of them will be able to make it. However, it's nice to extend the invite to everyone. Try to avoid friction by inviting people who hate each other but remember it's your party, so invite who you like.

The Perfect Invitations*

In the age of Facebook invites and group chats, written invitations are dying out. However, I like to send out proper invites to my parties (I'm a classy gal) and these ones from Basic Invite are the perfect Christmas party invitation. In fact, they offer so many different types of invite, including beautiful foiled ones and holiday photo cards so you can add a personalised touch to your invites. In fact, when choosing where to go for my invitations for holiday party was a no-brainer, as Basic Invite have some beautiful ones at such a low cost and they are fully customisable with almost unlimited colours to choose from (there's over 180!) so you can really make them personal to you - and there's also 40 envelope colour options. I chose a theme of red, green and navy for my cards as they're the most festive colours in my opinion, and personalised them all with basic information about the party on. They also offer some foiled invites, which is extremely exciting. Since they are a US company, ordering early is a must as they take a few weeks to come but are so worth it when they do.

I picked up some custom samples, and Basic Invite is one of the few sites to allow you to order samples of your printed invites before going crazy and buying 100s for your many guests which I think is a fantastic service. And, you know what is a huge pain? Having to write out over 100 addresses to go with your invites. Well, Basic Invite have you covered there too! They offer an Address Capturing Service, which allows you to use social media to capture your friends and family's addresses which will then be stored on your account and can be selected when you do your designing to save you having to write out all those addresses over and over again! If you want to get over 250+ Christmas card and invite designs for 30% off then you can use the code holi30.

Food & Drink

An essential element to a party is deciding what food and drink you want to serve. For our party, as we are students, I've written 'bring your own bottle' on the invites so that people know wine isn't going to be provided (I'm sorry - I'm on a budget!) However, I will probably be making some form of festive cocktail for the party, recipes I will be trying out nearer the time. As for food, decide if you want to have a sit down meal, a buffet or just light nibbles. I think for our party I'm going to do a selection of festive nibbles including mince pies, sausage rolls, brownie bites and crips and snacks. The easiest place to shop for these bits when you're on a budget is Iceland, as their frozen party food isn't at all bad and very purse-friendly.

Music

This one is a no-brainer, but music is essential at a party and during Christmas there's only one sort of tune I can really get down to. And that's Christmas music. We will have a selection of everyone's favourite Christmas hits including 'Fairytale of New York', 'Christmas Wrapping', 'Step Into Christmas' and 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday' as well as some classic Michael Bublé Christmas hits, my favourites being 'Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)', 'Cold December Night' and 'Holly Jolly Christmas'. Maybe Christmas music isn't for you and you'd rather have something less cheesy on at your party but for me, you can't have a Christmas party without a bit of Wizzard playing on the speakers while you're tipsy on Prosecco.

These are my tips for throwing a fantastic Christmas party. Are you planning on throwing a festive shin-dig this year? If so, what are your top tips for throwing a party people will remember long into 2018 and beyond?

*This post has been sponsored.*