Stress-Free Holiday Party Planning Tips

Planning a holiday party can be a pretty stressful experience, especially if you’re catering for a large group of people. Even if your party isn’t due to be hosted for a number of months, large events often take a lot of time and effort to plan and it’s no surprise if you want to get started as soon as possible so that everything runs smoothly when it comes to making all the finishing touches and putting everything together. If you’re feeling a little overwhelmed with your holiday party planning, we’ve got some top tips to ensure that the experience is as stress-free as possible.

Make a Plan

You may well have a mental plan which involves all of the different factors involved in planning your perfect party, but the issue with that is that it’s easy to forget things – especially if things start to get stressful and hectic. In order to make sure that you keep some order and method, making a plan is essential. Calendar planning is a great idea – mark the day of the party in your calendar, and then fill in the days before with things that need to be done, including even the most mundane tasks such as choosing music, as the little tasks are the ones you’re probably going to be most likely to forget. A simple checklist is also a great idea, as it helps you to keep track of what you’ve completed and what is left to do.

Easy Yet Impressive Food

If you’re going to be doing the catering yourself, the idea of cooking for a large number of people might already be giving you sweaty palms.  Preparing meals for large numbers of people is never easy, and is even more of a task if you don’t have much, or even any help in the kitchen. In order to make sure that the food preparation side of things is as simple and easy as possible, stick to menu items that are really impressive, but also easy to make. Grab-and-go, finger food type menus are usually a hit at holiday parties, and the best thing about them is that they don’t take much preparation and many items, such as olives or pistachios, can be store-bought.

Finding a Venue

Those looking to book a venue such as a banquet hall to host their holiday party should be doing so as early as possible. Booking the venue early not only checks one thing off the list of things that you need to do in preparation for the party, you’re also more likely to get better deals on price if you book well in advance. If you’re planning on hosting the party in a popular area such as Los Angeles, you should be looking for where to have your holiday party in LA as early as possible as leaving it too late could mean that all the venues which you’d hoped for are fully booked, leaving you disappointed and rushing around at the last minute to find somewhere else.

Keeping Kids Entertained

Holiday parties tend to be very family-orientated. However, hosting a party that’s entertaining for both the adults and kids involved can be quite a challenge. Thankfully, there are loads of things that you can do to keep kids occupied whilst the parents enjoy a few drinks at the bar. Setting up a craft table or a kids’ corner where party games are played is a fantastic idea that’s sure to keep everybody happy, or you could hire a children’s party entertainer to make sure that all the little ones are having as much fun as possible.

Outsourcing

There is no shame at all in getting some help with your party planning if you’re unsure that you’ll be able to manage it all by yourself. Give yourself permission to outsource and take advantages of other people’s offers of assistance. For example, if you’re planning to do the catering yourself but aren’t a fan of making deserts or baked goods, maybe a friend who loves desert making and baking could help, or you could even find a great bakery.

Send Out Invites Early

Last but not least, it’s important to inform your guests of the party and send out invitations as early as possible in order to ensure that people have enough time to make any necessary plans so that they can attend. Leaving your invitations too late could mean that only half of the people you’ve invited can make it, so get them out and RSVP’d to as early as you can.

Do you have any party planning tips to add? Let us know in the comments.