Grad Parties---share your wisdom...

If you have a party the same day as graduation be prepared for people to shuffle in and out, and they may not necessarily be eating at your party if they have been to others.

It is ok to just serve hamburgers, hot dogs, and a small selection of vegetarian options.

Have a guest book out so you can remember who attended and as a place to get addresses from people for thank you notes.

Use plastic tablecloths on tables so you can just wrap everything up and throw it away at the end of the party.

Grad parties vary based on what area you are in. Here, no one has a grad party on the day of graduation- our graduation was June 2, and grad parties are every weekend from June 4/5 through August 13. Grad parties here are all considered Open Houses. A meal is served, often catered, and it is virtually impossible to figure out how many people will be eating. Beer is almost always served (to adults), but I know that is not the case everywhere.
My ds' party is July 1, at an offsite location (meaning not at our home). We have just over 300 invited and about 175 yes and maybe RSVP' s. We have 300 cans of pop, 220 small bottles of water, not enough beer yet, and a caterer handling the food. Two full sheet cakes, which is probably too much.

ETA: whether people will eat at your party depends on how many other parties there are that day. So far, ds'  is the only one we know of on that day, but next Saturday and the one after, we have 8 parties each day. When we RSVP, we let them know if we will be eating dinner at their party or not, which is the important part!

People were more inclined to drink than eat. We did have a lot of town relatives that we were feeding for four days, so the food was eventually consumed. I did four different kinds of meat for sandwiches in crock pots. I tried a cake and I tried cupcakes. Neither one was a big hit. A friend did mini cheesecake bites and they were much more popular. Have several places for food and plates and more people might snack. Several places for trash cans means less clean up for you. Have a bad weather option. If you can, have a few game activities for the younger crowd. The longer they are entertained, the better. And, most importantly, if your son's teacher shows up who really was amazing, have booze as a gift for her. The kids can't bring it to school, but it makes a great gift he can give to her at the party.

Well, now I need that crock pot.

So your kid's going to be a junior? As in graduating 2 years from now?

When they were passing out planning-ahead genes, you must have pushed me out of line. You're sooooooo far ahead of where I was when my kids were that age.

Go you!


ETA:  I hope you know that I'm just jealous, and wish I was more like you.  
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Well after watching my sister in law blow my nephews party WAAAY out of proportion, I have a few pointers.  

1.  Have some filling food at your party.  You need to make sure there is more than just mac n' cheese and popcorn.  And I am not even kidding.  Nobody is going to stay longer than 10 minutes for that and water.  

2.  You do not need to rent out the entire baseball stadium at the high school for your kids party.  Yes, I realize that for some messed up reason you've decided you need to "compete with all the rich families at this school" but honestly, you are the only ones who didn't host it in your backyard.  You are the only ones in the entire class of kids who decided that picnic tables and yummy food in the backyard wasn't good enough.  You let Pinterest suck you in and convince you that your family needed to be better than everyone else.  I mean if you think you can fill up an entire baseball stadium for your kid's graduation party for the whole time, ok then.  But really, it was too big of a space and not enough people or games/stuff to do to fill the space.  It made it look like nobody came to his party which was not the case.  

3.  Don't constantly bitch at your extended family members who are offering legit ways to help.  It makes us not want to help.  

4.  You do not need to keep a running list of who said they'd come and then didn't show vs. who said they weren't coming and really didn't come in your head and announce it to people at all times during the party.  

5.  But really, you need to have some different types of food at your party to feed your guests with.  Nobody wants to leave hungry.  
ETA:  I will say the one thing that she made that I really thought was special and nice looking (and hopefully can do myself way down the road when my kids graduate) is she made these really awesome photo boards.  But instead of the standard tape the photos to different poster boards, she made them digitally, and blew them up and printed them in poster board size.  Then she had them laminated, and they were hung along the fence.  They looked really really nice, and this way none of the original photos were damaged with the tape and whatnot.  

We had a bunch of my relatives (husban'd's side) all visiting.  Not one helped.  They all just sat around talking for days.  I guess I wasn't surprised.  Thankfully my husband cleaned the house and did all of the bedding after they left.  My son's gf (also graduated but her party was the next day) stayed to help and talk to me for a couple of hours.  In hindsight, I should asked for help from a friend.

I did this. It was enough for 100.   There was finger food and stuff to make a meal.

I made 400 or so cupcakes



Yes, I know I have no flooring, we are still finishing this , and can not decide what to put down.

I can't post the picture from his party, but I can try and make a dummy version to post here. It might be a little while though!

Ours is soon, so I can only speak to the before so far 

Buy supplies throughout the year for it.

I have a boy, no sports teams invited, so it is a lot smaller
and more casual.

If you plan to scan pics or find all their school pictures,
get a big jump on that ... months in advance.
I plan to have pics scrolling on our tv, computer, 
and digital photo frame (all in different rooms, inside).
I was going to print out the pics, but some of the older scanned
ones were too low quality when I downloaded them to a
print site.

My plan is to have (borrow) crock pots for the hot food and
put the cold food in one of those blow-up rectangular 
tabletop "cooler" things that you put ice into (3 ft long, white,
got it at Christmas Tree Shops last year).
I think a lot of people use the chafing dishes, but we will have
a few toddlers here so I want all the food inside and no open flames.

We kept putting off house projects, and now it is total crunch time.
Bad move on our part.

I did pick up one of those picture mats for people to sign (from Michael's).

I am not Pinterest-ing for the party.  Just food, friends, lots of school colors.
And it is a small, mostly family party.

ETA. My friends have had much larger, team-oriented parties.  They all took turns
being the helpers, so the grad's parents could enjoy their own party.  It worked out
really well for them (5-6 families, parties different days).

We just did an open house for our house warming party this past Saturday.

I agree, do the prep work before. On the day of, just put it out and be done! That is what I did. It was great to be out of the kitchen and visit.

Our oldest graduated 2 yrs ago... here are a few tips.

1st. Cater as much of the food as you can afford. Our kid wanted BBQ. So we ordered pulled pork and shredded smoked chicken & BBQ beans for his party ( one of our neighbors does BBQ and catering on the side) We bought salads ( potato salad and cole slaw) from Sams club in the tubs and transferred into glass bowls. We also had a large fruit tray. I cut some fruit the night before and the rest the morning of. Order less food than you think you need. I ordered for as many as I thought was coming and we had so much food left over it was INSANE! I am pretty sure I just threw out the last frozen bag of shredded chicken.

2nd. Dont get a cake if you are having an outside party. Cake gets dry and gross when it is already cut into. I ordered cupcakes in his school colors from the grocery store. Also only order 1/2 as many cupcakes as you think you will need.

3rd if you are doing an outside party, Have a plan for rain. We rented a big ass tent, tables and chairs. We ended up with a larger tent than we really needed, but by the time I called that is all I could get. If you need to rent a tent, Call and make your reservation before christmas! I waited until mid Jan and most places here were already booked! Tables and chairs are inexpensive to rent and in most cases the place will deliver them the day before. This will help you! So if they offer it, TAKE the place up on it!

4th. Get with reality on what you can actually get done the day of. I printed all of these pics and was planning to do this whole photo wall. OMG. I didnt get it done at all. WHAT I did get done was to order a Photo book from Walgreens with pics of him as he grew up.... I left blank space on the top and the bottom of the photos so friends could sign. this way he has a photo book with his pics and with all of the attendees well wishes.

5th. Start looking for decorations the yr before. I was able to get the coolest card box on clearance at Target for $2 I even got Mylar Balloons in his school colors on clearance online. I got the big bouquet sets that have the grad cap and 4 or 5 others to go with it for less than $3 online. Even with the cost to blow them up, I still had less than $7 in balloons that were $15 for the set at party City. Price stuff before graduation next yr so that you know what a good sale / clearance price is! And make sure you only look for sale items that do not have the yr on them.

6th.  I agree with throw away table cloths.  I went the cheap way and got the paper ones at Sams club, they are just plain white.  then I did a graduation themed runner down the middle.  I just cut wide strips from a plastic theme table cloth. 

7th. Try to plan your party date in advance. In my sons circle of friends, they all tried to plan their party around each others. that way they could all attend each others parties. If your child has a close circle, this might be something you want to talk to other parents or the kids about.

8th. Only order the SCHOOL grad announcements that you know you will give out. We only sent those to family that was attending the graduation or to out of town grandparents that could not make the trip. We did a photo announcement / Party invite for everyone else. Doing the photo invite will also mean you do not need to send a photo to everyone.

9th. Do your house things NOW! Do not wait until 2 weeks before to paint the entire inside of the house including all of the trim. It will stress you out.

10th.  This probably will cause you lots of stress, but just remember, its all about your kid on grad weekend.  and its only a weekend.  Life will resume as normal the following week.    

I will also have a graduate in 2018.  It's KILLING me not to start shopping NOW!  I keep telling myself, no, wait 1 more yr.  lol.  I totally understand the planning early.  I am the same way!