Tired of the same old, stressed-out expensive routine every December 31? The good news is that there are plenty of fun alternatives to the dismal parties that you’ve suffered every year. Here are five ideas to lighten up your journey into the new year.
1) BYOA – Bring your Own Appetizer
Hosting a party will need food, but you can take some of the stress out of the occasion by inviting your guests to contribute a starter or snack of their own choice.
It’s a suggestion suitable for all levels of cooking, from salads and carrots sticks to spicy chicken wantons or profiteroles. Pinterest, as ever, is the front runner for inspirational ideas.
2) Fancy dress
A tried and tested winner, with many variations: superheroes, cartoons, musicians and film stars are four of the more obvious. But let’s try and be different.
It’s the new year, so we like the idea of dressing up as someone who made the news in 2014. That could be a celebrity, politician or sportsperson, or simply someone who made the headlines – good or bad.
Fancy dress couples are always funny, but as organiser you could throw a devilish angle into the mix by choosing who the ‘couples’ are. For example, let’s say your mum and dad are coming to the party, as are your friends Joe and Emma. You pick several celebrity couples – let’s take Posh and Becks as an example – and carry out a draw a week or two before to allocate the roles, which you will inform by email. So in this example Joe could be Becks and your mum could be Posh – and neither will see each other before the event, nor know who their ‘partner’ is. Cue hilarity.
3) Themed decorations
You don’t need to ask people to dress up if you’ve dressed up the room already. You could go for Hawaiian or Caribbean style with coconuts and palms, but you’ve got the upcoming spring and summer for such vividly-dressed frivolity.
So alternative cool suggestions include a rustic chalet of furs, roaring fires, Scandinavian fare, and craft beers; winter woods with walls decorated with animals and browns, greys and reds; or winter palaces complete with blue/white fairy lights and snowflake decorations.
4) Going out
There comes a time, probably around the age of 30, when going into a town centre, when the crush of pushing into overpriced pubs and bars and stepping over prone forms at 3am on January 1, becomes a bit of a bore.
Alternatives include finding a quiet village pub (book taxis early), booking a village hall, or going the whole way and renting a rural cottage in Norfolk, Devon or Cornwall. Get a local brewery involved and you may be able to cut down on the cost of beer.
Essential Travel lists ten alternatives here, including the Lake District, Hogmanay in Edinburgh, and the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth.
5) Predictions for 2015
A little game as an aside to a party; each guest writes down a few predictions on pieces of paper, scrunches them up and then places them in a bowl. Later in the night the predictions are read out, and guests have to guess who wrote them. You could even take a sneaky look at some of the specials and bets on websites such as BetVernons on your phone.
Be careful not to make the predictions too demoralising or offensive, unless you’re writing about people who aren’t in the room, of course. You could play it safe by forecasting sports results or celebrity news – but it wouldn’t be as much fun.
