The Anatomy of a Party – “Time for a Party,” Part I: Inspiration and Theme Selection

This ongoing series of posts will follow the development of a party from concept to event…

Inspiration for this party:

My husband mentioned that he needed me to plan a cocktail party this coming May for clients and business associates. In this event, I did not have to select the date, the location, or the time for the event. The date was set by convenience, the time by what we both felt comfortable with, and we will be using our home for the event.

1. Theme

I never plan a party or event without a theme in mind. I always believe that the more fun the theme, the more fun the event. Unfortunately (for me) for a cocktail party where the guests are primarily clients and business associates, I need to reign in my theme from something like ‘The Wizard of Oz’. I threw out a couple of ideas:

  • Keys – “The key to our success is your business” for example
  • Watch or Clock – “The time is now for a gathering of friends”
  • Newspaper or newsprint – featuring headlines about the event
  • Letters – I planned on using the brown craft letters on the food table spelling out EAT, and use a variety of fonts on the invitation, with perhaps an image of a vintage typewriter.

I discussed my plans for each of these themes, and my husband selected the watch/clock theme.

2. Invitation

The next step (since date, time and location were not a factor) is designing my invitation. Even with a more subdued theme, I ALWAYS theme my invitations to my party. I want guests to know from the beginning, that this is going to be a special event. I have chosen a vintage clock image from The Graphics Fairy blog to use as my primary image.


The really neat thing about this image, is that our party is planned for 7:00!

More on the invitations soon…..

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