Oh What A Night! (Christmas Parties in general)

Name: zoe_page_1

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Product:	Christmas Parties in general
Date:	07/12/01 (152 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fantastically fabulous fun!

Disadvantages: It comes but once a year....

Last week we had a party. Nothing unusual about that, apart from the fact that despite the fact that I was organizing the event, I knew less than 1% of the guests beforehand.
Still, the party went well, all the guests seemed happy enough, so I guess we can class it as a success. Being in charge of such a large party can be pretty daunting, but here’s how we did it.


~~~ PLANNING ~~~

You can never really begin planning early enough. Believe it or not, the initial steps for our annual Christmas party are taken in July. Yep, smack bang wallop in the middle of summer. It takes a long time to organize because, as well as the 250 + disadvantaged elderly guests, we need to organize celebrity appearances, and since we cannot offer to pay these personalities anything for their time, the sooner we start asking the better chance we have. Also, the sooner you start sorting things out, the smoother the big night is likely to run although of course even you cannot predict which Manchester taxi firms (not mentioning any names - you know who you are) will decide not to bother turning up.


~~~ VENUE ~~~

Size matters in almost all walks of life, and never had the sentiment been more true than in this case. We use one of our university’s cafeterias for the event, since we need a bar, a kitchen and room for all the guests. It may not look the most attractive place at 2pm when we start setting up, but give us a couple of hours and we have it looking like a winter wonderland – cheap but cheerful posters, decorations and lights all help us achieve this.


~~~ FOOD ~~~

There are generally two choices here – do it yourself and cope with the stress, or have someone else do it and cope with the costs. We choose the later so that on the day we can sit back and wait for the caters to appear and lay it out. Typical party food is provided (sausage rolls, sandwiches, things on sticks) along with fa
bulous chocolate creations and cheese and biscuits for the less adventurous. In previous years we’ve provided our own bar, but this year we had the restaurant staff do it for us – drink prices were higher but it was much easier on our part.


~~~ GUESTS ~~~

The average guest at our party is half a century older than me. Some people say that you should try and keep a suitable age group, say over 60s only, but we’ve found that our student volunteers (myself included) can have as much fun as everyone else there. Although we don’t have anyone in between (it’s mainly under 30 and then over 60) that doesn’t seem to create any problems for us.

We have the backing of a number of celebrity guests every year. Not to name drop, ok just to name drop, this year we had Jenny Powell, Jim Bowen, Toyah Willcox, tons of the winners from Stars in Their Eyes, the Beverly Sisters (!!!) and a nice selection of stars from various soaps (Coronation Street, Hollyoaks, Emerdale) plus lots more people besides. Believe me, having met and bought drinks for this lot, I’ll never watch them on screen the same again.


~~~ GAMES ~~~

What would a party be without some games? They’re what the occasions are all about, but they must be carefully tailored to the guests present – musical chairs might not have gone down as well with this lot as the bingo provided did, and the raffles worked a treat, with all the old dears trying to get their hands on the TVs, videos and, erm, boxes of chocolates on offer.



~~~ HELPERS ~~~

Never underestimate the value of extra help. I like to be independent, and generally work on the principle that “if you want something done right, do it yourself” but this is one occasion on which I have to change my ways. We ask for help starting in September, and although between then and December many names come and go from my list, we usuall
y have an excellent turn out on the night. I know some of them write for dooyoo now (thanks to yours truly) so a big THANK YOU to any of them reading this – we couldn’t have done it without your support.


~~~ PRESENTS ~~~

What a cliché it is, but it is sometimes better to give than to receive. I handed out I think about 75% of the presents on the night (each guest got one, ranging from diaries and shampoo to copies of Macbeth and Dracula….) and having grateful recipients for once in my life (compared to certain customers at work I could mention) was wonderful.



I woke up the night after the party feeling pretty rough. Now that’s normally an indication of a good night but I hadn’t been drinking or smoking all night long. The reason I felt so bad was because I’d had very little sleep that night or the night before, and have been running no diet coke induced adrenaline for too long. Although I knew I should be getting up and revising for the German exam I had that afternoon, I lay there for a few minutes going over the events of the night before. The party went well, I’m proud of what we accomplished that night, and you know what? There are few feelings in the world that can compare to knowing you made a difference to 276 people’s lives less than 12 hours ago.


<< Sorry if you don’t think this is in the right place, but the category title seemed ok, and there aren’t any guidelines that seem to say “do not write about UMIST Community Action’s 2001 Christmas party….. >>

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