With graduation right around the corner, it’s time to get those parties planned and perfect! Use this easy checklist to learn exactly how to plan a graduation party and ensure you don’t forget anything important!
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After years of studying and tests and schoolwork, graduation is a time to celebrate you and all your hard work! I can tell you from personal experience that after dealing with the college admissions process, I think we all could use a little party to celebrate yourself!
Graduation parties can be super easy to plan if you follow all the right steps! I’ve got the perfect checklist for you to make sure you’ve got yourself the perfect party.
This post is all about how to plan a graduation party!
1. Pick a date and location
Before you can do anything else, you have to get the basic information about your party all picked out. This includes the date and location. Specific times don’t need to be figured out until a little bit later. However, you definitely want to have these two pieces of information picked out and finalized.
Make sure to cross reference your family’s schedules to make sure everyone is available the day that you choose!
If you are planning on an outdoor location (for example, your backyard), you may also want to pick a rain date just in case the weather isn’t in your favor.
2. Plan your guest list
Once you’ve got the date and time figured out, it’s time to plan who’s coming to your party. Depending on your budget and preferences, you can have a family only party, friends only party, or family and friends party.
Make a list of everyone you are planning on inviting and their contact information. You can send a text invite, email invite, or mail an invitation. Make sure to write down the contact information (phone number, email address, or home address) that you are planning on using.
3. Send a senior graduation announcement/invitation
It is super important that once you have your guest list done, you send out graduation announcements or invitations. Depending on how early in advance you are from your party date, you can either send a senior graduation announcement (like a save the date), or go straight to your graduation invitations.
For either option, if you plan on physically sending a card in the mail, I would highly recommend using Basic Invite for your announcement and invitations.
Through Basic Invite, you can completely customize your grad cards from start to finish! With nearly unlimited colors and the ability to receive custom samples, this is quite literally the easiest way to get the perfect graduation invitation for your party.
4. Plan your decorations
The next step is to begin all the planning. First, plan your decor.
You can start by picking a theme if you are going to have one. If you don’t want a theme, you can also just choose to base everything on a color scheme, whether that be your graduating school colors, upcoming school colors, or other colors you like!
Start ordering whatever you are going to want to decorate with and buy as much as you can in advance. For things like big balloon arrangements and other larger decor pieces, this stuff needs to be done in advance so you don’t miss out on anything!
5. Plan your menu
Next, the best part in my opinion: time to plan the food.
With this, you have a few options depending on your party location. If you are having your party at a restaurant, you can work with the restaurant on a condensed menu or just use the regular menu.
If you are hosting your party at a house, you can either cater all of the food or make everything yourself. For catering, pick a place to get the food from and choose your favorite dishes! If you want to go the DIY-route, find all of your favorite recipes and some new ones and put together everything you plan on cooking.
6. Plan your entertainment
Again, depending on your party, this may vary slightly. For a party at your house, consider getting some entertainment options. For example, for a backyard party, entertainment can be backyard games like corn hole, Spikeball, KamJam, life size Jenga, life size connect four and more.
7. Throw your party!
Now that all the planning is done, all you have to do is wait for the day to come!
The preparation for your party is probably going to be a little bit hectic during the few days before party day. However, if you planned everything out well, it should all go smoothly!
When the party is finally here, don’t forget to relax and enjoy yourself. This is the fun part!!
8. Send personalized graduation thank you cards
The final step to plan a graduation party is to send thank you notes for all of your gifts a week or two after the party.
You can use Basic Invite for these as well! They have the perfect graduation thank you cards that can be 100% personalized to match the theme or color scheme of your party!
These thank you cards are such a cute and thoughtful final touch on your graduation party.
This post was all about how to plan a graduation party!
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