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Planning for a party
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Listing out the things you have to do before a party will save you a lot of stress and embarrassment.
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IT'S PARTY time! Planning a `get together'? Whether it is a large formal affair or a small informal one, it is great fun for some and a nightmare for others. The fun and the nightmare are the two sides of the same coin. It all depends on how organised you are from conception of the idea to the final execution. Practically everyone has a `party' horror story to tell! In order to make party planning manageable, break it down to all the different components and write it all down. No detail is too small or irrelevant. Don't get lazy now and think, "I will remember it all"! No, you will not. Something is sure to slip your mind and that will be the starting point of your stress. Everyone starts out with the guest list, which is well and good. Here is where you really have to spend some time and thought to the composition of your list. This is a tough one. If it is a small dinner party that you are planning, you want to pay close attention to the personalities of the people, who they are and how well they would fit in with the rest of the group so that everyone is having a great time. There is nothing comparable to an evening spent with a small group where the chemistry sizzles, the conversation sparkles with wit and intelligence over drinks and dinner. If you want such an evening, which is every hostess's dream, spend time on composition of the guest list. For a more formal do, the guest list is a compilation of people who you "must" invite rather than who you "want" to invite. This requires some thought too because you cannot afford to miss anyone in the "must" category! The invitation itself can range anywhere from verbal to written depending on the level of formality of the get together. A verbal invitation could be in person or over the telephone and the written one, again depending on the level of formality, can be an e-mail or a handwritten or an engraved invitation. Whatever the mode of invitation, there is a format to follow. Formal invitation is worded in the third person. Any invitation must contain the information of what, when, and where and in that particular order. To give you an example, a formal invitation would read something like this:
Mr. & Mrs ------------
Request the pleasure of your company
At dinner
On Saturday, the fifth of March
At half past eight o' clock
Sealords Neptunetown, Lake Geneva
R.S.V.P Home address
The format will be the same for both formal and informal invitations. You start out with who is inviting, what is it for, when is it (day, date followed by time) and where is it. The more formal the occasion, you spell out the date and time and the only punctuation you will be using is a comma to separate information on the same line. After doing all this don't forget to jot down the date and information in your calendar! This is purely a voice of experience speaking from my past. My horror story is this - The door bell rang and upon opening it, I was confronted with a cheerful ``hello'' from acquaintances of ours, very well dressed with a bottle of red wine in their hand. My mind was racing with the thought, "I am sure my dinner party is planned for tomorrow and not today." I had to quickly banish this thought when I spied another car pulling up in the driveway! The word panic would be an understatement! So write, write, write down everything - you definitely can avoid the trauma of guests arriving a full day early at your doorstep.
CHITRA DANGER
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