New Year's Eve Parties often suffer from a lack of imagination. In order to make the last hours of the year truly memorable you need to do more than supply food and drinks while watching the ball drop on TV.
Here are ten creative New Year's Eve Party ideas to get the ball rolling on making your guest's night special!
1. Plan For Midnight Smooches
It's not enough to have delicious finger food and drinks set up around your house -- have serving bowls of refreshing mints placed around your house or apartment. Do your part to make sure all those kisses bringing in the New Year are pleasant ones!
2. Host A Black & White Affair With A Twist
New Year's Eve is possibly the the most nostalgic and classic of the holidays. Play off of the nostalgia and old world charm by taking a black and white affair one step further. Instead of your invitation meaning "suits only", tell guests to wear only white, gray and black clothing and accessories -- transforming the vibe and look of your party into a 1930's-style soiree. Encourage them to wear old fashioned clothes too, if they have them! For party theme consistency, have old classic black and white movies playing on your televisions in the background.
3. Reflect On Yourself & Your Year
Everyone's a little vain at fancy parties. Decorate mirrors around your home to give your guests something to enjoy while fixing their hair or checking their teeth for lipstick. Tinsel and white Christmas lights are a great way to accent the edges of mirrors. Another great idea is to give guests a slip of paper and ask them to "reflect" on the past year then pin those reflections on a nice classy mirror for other guests to see.
4. Throw A New Year's Pajama Party
Say... you don't really want a normal stuffy New Year's Eve Party? Since you're staying up so late, why not make New Year's a pajama party? Make a cereal bar with classic children's cereal and play some nostalgic childhood board games.
5. Take A Glimpse Into The Future
Hire a fortune teller to read palms and predict futures for your guests before midnight. If you don't want to spring for a professional fortune teller, you could make things up about your guests yourself. Just keep things funny and light!
6. Focus On What's Important
A party that focuses on generosity will start the New Year off on the right foot. Pick a cause and ask guests to donate an item to the cause. A light, inexpensive dinner can be a great time to mingle and talk about what is important to everyone.
7. Serve Personalized Fortune Cookies
For a nice treat before the New Year, buy a large bag of fortune cookies- you can usually find these in your local Asian market. Find the type of fortune cookies that have the fortune paper sticking out of the sides, then remove the paper and make your own custom fortunes. To make this New Year's Eve party idea really memorable, make the fortunes outlandish, funny, and personalized to each recipient.
8. Have Your Guests Send Messages To Their Future... Selves
Set up a computer and make a new email account just for the event on Gmail, Hotmail, etc... Allow your guests to send an email messages to themselves that will be delivered the next New Year's Eve using a service such as, FollowUpThen.com. Make a sign and place it next to the computer where your party guests will easily see it, with information giving them examples of things they could email to themselves next year -- asking whether they accomplished last year's New Year's resolution or not, telling them to send their email to: [email protected], CC-ing their personal email address so they'll be sure to receive it.
9. Host A New Year's Eve Wine Tasting
For adult fun, ask all of your guests to bring their favorite bottle of wine for your "on the spot" New Year's Eve wine-tasting event. Few things feel more refined and elegant than wine tastings. This is also a great way to get your guests mingling and talking.
10. Give New Year's Party Favor Gift Bags
Make special swag bags (gift totes) to give to your guests as they leave. Some good gift content choices would be to add some hangover cures to the bags if you expect your party will get wild and crazy --such as Tylenol and Alka-Seltzer. Another good idea to make them personalized is to write a short note for each guest that denotes your favorite times you've had with them over the past year.
Guest Blogger Bio:
Trevor Nelson specializes in creative, memorable home entertaining ideas and cocktail party planning. Professionally, Trevor works as the HomeWetbar.com content writer, focusing on helping others celebrate the good times they share with family, friends, and co-workers.
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I do this... I write to help to create to opportunities for all who choose to pursue their passion to have parties almost irregardless regard to economic constraints.
I think if we keep talking about the cost of parties (I write blog posts, you write comments), together, maybe we can break down some of the party industry's price barriers and shame some of the people who've taken your money and delivered a poor quality product right into growing a conscious and treating you right (nice thought, huh?).
Opportunities to be inspired about parties are everywhere. Yet, people looking out for your wallet are few and far between. My goal is to inspire you, causing you to question the way things are that have been the status quo for too long. When we stand together and speak up, we can be a powerful force.
Let's keep the conversation of change going. Because in the sea of everyone talking, one voice is a whisper... several voices are a scream.
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