Corporate Party Extravaganza (by Martha)

Our Holiday Party is a What???

Hear those carolers? See those lights? It’s the most wonderful time of the year for Christmas is here! For those of us that work for the man it also means it’s time for the annual corporate holiday party. Even if your office party is a catered affair at a swanky club or hotel with an open bar, on some level it still ends up being slightly boring, awkward in essence..corporate.

If you’ve found yourself lucky (or unlucky) enough to be the planner of your office holiday party, then you know it’s hard to work to try to make it as un-corporate as possible. Before I moved to New York, I used to work for a company that hosted what I still consider to this day to be one of the best holiday parties. It was a costume party!

A costume party in December you ask? Yup. I’ll admit, I was mortified and annoyed and frankly inconvenienced when I went to my first one. By the time I left the company I was the official holiday party planner! Nothing lowers your inhibitions about drinking and dancing with your coworkers like being dressed as a Cindy Lauper while the CFO is dressed up in drag as Cher.

Here are my suggestions for how to plan and host successful a holiday costume party:

1. Choose a theme. Believe me you will be met with resistance from coworkers about the whole costume thing. Narrow it down for them so they don’t have one more stress to add to their list. Some of the more successful themes included Wigs, Superheroes, Rock Star, TV Personalities, or my personal favorite Studio 54.

2. Venue – make it as non-traditional as possible. You’re already breaking tradition by making it a costume party, take it one step further with the venue locale. For 2 of the parties, the CEO was kind enough to let us have it as his lovely home in Northwest DC. Talk about having serious trust in his employees! After he moved, it was at a well known Chinese restaurant that was probably at it’s coolest circa 1968. Another year, we had it at a cheesy and I do mean cheesy dance club. Also, try to pick out a location where you can rent out the whole space. Make it a private affair!

3. Music – make sure there is lots of it. If you can’t afford a dj, ask fellow coworkers to make mixes. Make them feel that they have some say in the party. Plus, you'll be shocked to see how many of your coworkers hit the dance floor. Think your finance or IT guy! There is something about being in costume that makes people feel just a little bit more uninhibited.

4. Good food + open bar – You’ve made people dress up, the least you can do is reward them with copious amounts of alcohol and good food. Be sure you negotiate with the venue of a good cost per head.

5. Awards - Give out silly awards that honor the inside jokes of your department or office. Pass out the ballot the week leading up to the party then present them at the party. We called our awards The Haslies named after our CEO. Examples of awards included “Office Intimidator” “Speech of the Year” “Rookie of the Year” “Hardest to Reach” “Researcher of the Year” and lastly the “Office Blooper Award.” We also gave out best costume awards. The winners received gift certificates AND trophies!!! Who doesn’t love an engraved trophy like those we received in elementary school. I still proudly display my “Most Social” trophy.

This is a great recipe for office holiday party fun. That being said, while the costume will help you lower you inhibitions, it can’t extricate you from potentially awkward situations like making out with your coworker or hitting on your coworker's significant other. But if it’s done in costume, at least you can say it was done… “anonymously”!

Happy holidays!

Love, Martha

Other Awesome Party Ideas

So on Saturday my friend Mike expressed "concern" over me blogging only about parties that he's attended, basically fearing that he was going to be invited to some stranger's party some day, only to have it be some replica of party's past!

So this post is dedicated to Mike H. Here are some other awesome party ideas that I've had that never took flight.

1. Paint Ball
Boys love paint ball. A great idea for a co-ed party in honor of one of your fave guy pals.

2. Punks vs. Preppies
I can't take credit for this one, it was a party my friend Dierdre once threw. Basically, people got randomly assigned a type and had to dress up either as a punk rock kid or a preppie and later they had some kind of contest and I believe the Preppies won. It makes it more fun if the people dress up as the complete opposite of their usual inkling.

3.Trapeze Party
Um, need I say more? For those adventurous friends of yours who love to try new thing, why not spend a day at Trapeze school? Hell, I'd love it! (hint, hint ;-)

4. Pizza Grill
My friend Greg B. sent this to me. Basically, you make a bunch of pizza dough and buy lots of pizza toppings. You cook the pizza dough half way in the oven, and then people come over and make pizzas. The fun part is that you put a pizza stone in a regular weber grill, and after
everyone has assembled their own pizzas, they bake them the rest of the way on the stone in the grill.

5. Roller Skating Part-ay!
While roller rinks died away in the past decade, they are seeing a resurgence. Mainly thought of as a "retro" thing, there are actually die hard skaters who simply love jiving to the music. Check out this Roller Rink in Brooklyn.

6. A Decade Party
Always a fun twist to liven a party up, specialize any event (Anniversary or Birthday) by making it center around "that date in history." For example, if it were my Birthday we could put up pictures of famous people born on December 23, 1979, get music that was popular in 1979, make snacks and food from 1979 (bottle rocks!) and even dress up in 70s attire.

7. David Bowie Party
Self explanatory. David Freakin' Bowie.

8. Bath Houses
Weird, and maybe a little too intimate for some, but the idea is that you go to a bath house, wearing bathing suits, and soak up the goodness with good friends. Hell, you can even go to one with a billiard and cigar room! A GREAT idea for a bachelor party!

9. A puppy party!
I just went to one of these on Saturday. The best thing in the whole wide world is a puppy dog. Bring one to your next party, and I assure you it'll be a success.

1o. Wee-Lympics
OK, so this is the only one so far that's been done already, and at Mike H's house no less. Idea is simple, project Wii onto a wall, make people dress up in tennis outfits, and battle it out on Wii tennis, bowling, baseball, etc.

Party on people, party on.

BeDazzle Any Party!

Have you often thought, gosh, I wish I could make this party amazing, too bad I don't have a lot of money? Well, you're in luck! There is no need for money when you have a computer, printer, tape, and some time on your hands.

As promised, (10) simple, cheap ways to personalize any celebration:

1. A Photo Slide Show
Anyone who has a mac can do this on iDVD, and I'm sure there's an equivalent for PC's, I just don't know what it is.
It's simple to do--gather a bunch of photos of the person or people being honored/celebrated, and turn it into a slideshow complete with music.
I did this for my friend Pete's 30th Birthday party and I even emailed his sister to get pictures of when he was a little kid. Then I added some Frank Sinatra, his favorite all time singer, and viola, a wonderful DVD slideshow of Pete through the years that he was able to take home with him, and everyone enjoyed watching during the party.

2. A Wall of Memories
For Abby's party (mentioned above as the ultimate rock girl party), I was in charge of decorating the hotel suite. I did this by gathering awesome pictures of Abby + Friends from the past few years and framing them around bought Party City decorations around the whole suite. This was great for people to look at and smile at the memories, and it also celebrated Abby.
If you don't have pictures from the film era of photography, simply print out digital pictures at 5x7 or 4x6. And if you don't have a printer at home, which I don't, you can sneakily do it at work!

3. A Theme
I've gone over some of this in my first post, with themes ranging from Nautical Karaoke to Rock n Roll. The key to any theme is to make it something the party boy or girl enjoys. Think about what they like to do and then center the party around that, personalizing each detail.
Or, you can center a theme around a cultural event or annual festivity.
Examples of both of these are: 1) I threw a party for my boyfriend at the time that centered around driving all of our friends to Medieval Times in New Jersey (see image above). It was so ridiculous and childish, that it was amazing, and 2) I throw an annual Oscar Party, next year will be my 6th!


4. A Color Combo & Decorations
This is directly linked with a theme. Any good theme needs a good color scheme. For example, there's Red and Black, representing a person's favorite colors, or the traditional red, white & blue for a 4th of July party. However, you can also extend red, white & blue for other party themes. A few years ago, my boyfriend at the time became a citizen of the United States of America. To celebrate, I threw him a Red, White & Blue Party, complete with red, white & blue drinks!











5. Costumes!
I love, love, love dress codes for parties. You can specify that something is "formal," or you can ask your guests to dress up as part of the theme for the party. Not everyone will want to, which is fine, but those that do will have really great photo ops and I promise, they will have fun getting ready!
Two different costume examples are below--there's the Oscar party, in which I ask everyone to dress up as someone nominated in any of the categories. This can be a character from a nominated film, or a nominated actor. There's been some great costumes in the past, including characters from Juno, but my favorite was when I dressed up as a Dream Girl and my best friend Lauren dressed up as Penelope Cruz from Volver.







And another great one was when my friends Jaime and Abby and I dressed up as 50s gang girls to attend a Rockabilly show at Southpaw, and then a Halloween Birthday Party afterwards.



6. Cheese (or something like it)


EVERY party is made better by a snack table, and even a sucky party can be made bearable by a snack table. While you may think, food is expensive, it doesn't take much to make the masses happy. My favorite cheap party snack is chips and French Onion Dip (made by Lipton). The dip is to die for and costs around $3 something for a package of two. Another great place for cheap snacks, Trader Joe's, which just opened up in Brooklyn.
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&om=1&msa=0&msid=113004048650495608919.000001120fc9b0e5f47f9&ll=40.82628,-73.561707&spn=1.328022,1.642456&z=9

7. Tchatchkes
As shown below with the sailor pigs, tchatchkes are always ridiculous, should be inventive, and should be something someone would like to take home with them.
For holidays, my mom always decorates her table with little doo-dads that you can take home with you, whether it's little chickadees for Easter or tiny ornament placeholders that people can later put on their tree. It leaves people with a nice memory of a great time, and it adds to the deocorations of the party. Whereas simple streamers and signs make a party cookie cutter, tcatchkes add that persona touch that make your party stand out from all the rest!

8. Games
This can be "athletic", such as setting up Bocce game in the backyard, or a simple drinking game or poll. For example, for every Oscar party I have we do a poll where you rank your choices (who you think is going to win) from 1-5 in each category, and the person with the most "1's", or lowest score, wins. And since each person puts in $5, the winner gets an Oscar trophy and a nice pool of money!
Another fun one is drinking games based on characters' idiosyncrasies. For example, my girlfriends and I used to have an ANTM (America's Next Top Model, for those not in the know) Drinking Game where you'd have to drink whenever Tyra said "Fierce," or one of the models cried. Good times. http://nowhiteafterlaborday.blogspot.com/2005/11/americas-next-top-model-drinking-game.html
There are plenty of other drinking games, such as ones for watching the Presidential or VP Debates: http://davethenovelist.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/presidential-debate-drinking-game/

9. Surprises
These are easier than you think to pull off because no matter how many surprise parties you've been to, you always think that your friends are
You can throw the person off in a number of ways.
For my friend Carolina's surprise trip to Fire Island for a beach birthday getaway, we had her boyfriend pretend he was taking her on a romantic trip, and when she boarded the train, all of her best friends popped out to surprise her. Then just when she thought the surprise was over, when we landed at our destination, another group of her friends were waiting there for her!

Another way is to make it in an unexpected place so the person thinks they are going there for a completely different reason. For example, our first collective 30th birthday party surprise was for Pete, and we did it at his WORK! His co-worker asked him to come pick him up there as he was finishing up some things, and bam! we all jumped out and surprised him.
It was magical.

10. A Playlist
The simplest way to make a party a success is the music. With the invention of ipods, this is easier than ever before. Make sure you pick music the person likes but also music that makes people dance. Because the best kind of party ends with a dance party! It gives the party an unexpected and unprecedented energy.