November 17, 2015

5 Christmas Parties No One Else is Throwing This Year

It’s that time of year again. Holiday party time! We all have 150 parties to go to over the next month, and if you’re throwing your own, you probably don’t want it to be exactly like the other 149 parties. You might not have the budget to hire special event catering services for you shindig, but with a little creativity, you can DIY the holiday events and catering menu of the century! We collected a list from some of the best event planners of their most affordable, unique holiday events and catering ideas that anyone could do:

A Christmas Movie Theme

Choose your favorite holiday movie and use it as the inspiration for the decor, entertainment events and catering. For example, our favorite Christmas movie is Elf. For our Elf party, we created paper snowflakes and Lego decor reminiscent of the decorations that Buddy the Elf made for the department store he worked at. Our menu included dishes inspired by an four main food groups an elf sticks to: candy, candy canes, candy corn, and syrup.

A Cultural Theme
One unconventional Christmas party idea that will surely stand out against all of the other Christmas parties this season is a theme from across the globe. You could throw a luau with a Mele Kalikimaka “Christmas in Hawaii” party. Who wouldn’t feel the glee and wonderment of the holidays with ukulele music and a traditional Hawaiian feast of roasted pig? If that’s not in your budget, how about serving an hors doeuvres menu with simple Hawaiian themed appetizers?

A Black Tie Affair
Make your guests feel like VIPs with a Christmas gala. You don’t have to sell one of your vital organs to cover the bill if you’re creative. You can find elegant candles, lighting, and even faux silver platters at the dollar store. For an inexpensive menu, fondue can make a classy array. Put out a spread of cheeses, crackers, meat, and vegetables with a variety of warm dipping sauces. For dessert, set out cookies, marshmallow, and fruit with skewers for dipping in a chocolate fountain!

An Ugly Pajama Party
Ugly sweater parties are fun, but let’s be honest, you’re going to be invited to like 15 of them this year. Fortunately, clothing manufacturers seem to be really excelling at making terrible Christmas jammies in all sizes, that you can leverage to throw an Ugly Sweater Party with a hilarious twist. Invite your guests to join the fun in the ugliest Christmas-themed footed onsies they can find. Offer prizes for the most creative, festive, and ugliest Christmas jammies worn by a guest. Your menu could include traditional Christmas goodies, like hot chocolate, ham or turkey, and gingerbread cookies.

A Top Chef Cookie Party
Provide the basic ingredients for cookies (flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder, butter) as well as some wild-card ingredients (MandMs, chocolate chips, marshmallows, toffee, mint-chips, peanut butter, maybe even bacon) and ingredients to decorate (cookie cutters, frosting, fondant accents, sprinkles). Every guest (or team) can make their own mini batch of cookies. After sampling the cookies, the guests will vote for most delicious, most not-delicious, most festive, or whatever categories you dream up. The cookies take care of the dessert part of your menu, if want to serve normal food too, you could keep it as low key as delivered pizza, or as elaborate as your heart desires!