How to Stick to Your Budget when Hosting a Party

How to Stick to Your Budget when Hosting a Party

Hosting a dinner or party for your friends and family is a lovely way to get together to celebrate special events such as Christmas, New Year’s Eve, or birthdays – or to simply spend some quality time together. Hosting a party or a dinner party doesn’t come cheap though so requires some careful planning and a bit of research. In this article, we’ll look at ways to stick to your budget when hosting a party.

• Plan the event

The first thing to do is to plan the event well. Make a list of the people you would like to invite and consider what kind of get-together would work best for those guests. Next, send the invites and request that the invited people RSVP before a date that will give you plenty of time to sort out seating arrangements, food, and drinks according to your numbers. A week or two before should be the very minimum.

• Look for discounts for the drinks

Though many get-togethers work on a bring your own drink basis, it’s good etiquette to provide your guests with a welcome drink, wine for the table and other drinks when hosting a dinner party, especially. It’s important to ensure that you have enough for the whole evening. Guests often arrive with a bottle of wine as a party gift for the host, but you can’t rely on this so buying a few more bottles than you think you’ll need for your guests is a good idea. When purchasing larger quantities of wine like this, it’s definitely worth checking for discounts online. Find a majestic wine promo code and enjoy some huge savings on your wine shop.

• Borrow before hiring

If you’re hosting a bigger group and don’t have enough chairs, tableware, or glasses, ask around among your friends and family members before hiring. Someone else nearby might have some spare chairs or a large set of plates or wine glasses that you can borrow. It’s always worth asking around first instead of heading out to buy new supplies or hiring gear like this.

• Save on the food – catering or DIY?

What’s best to do when it comes to food depends on several things. How big the gathering is, how much time you have and if food preparation and cooking is something you are good at / enjoy or not. For larger parties and dinner events, catering is usually the best option as it will be too much to host the party and try to cook and serve a meal for a big group. For smaller events and more intimate dinner parties, you might choose to cook the food yourself if you’re skilled in the kitchen. You can also ask a friend or two to help you to make this part easier and more fun. You can also mix and match – perhaps you want to cook the main meal but buy the desserts from a local patisserie? Do the things that you can and want to do yourself as this will help you stick to your budget and help you achieve the party that you have imagined. Then get help with the other bits for a smooth evening without stress.

• Entertainment

For a dinner party, you don’t really need much entertainment – the guests chatting to each other should be enough with a bit of background music that you can set up yourself with a playlist and some speakers. For larger parties and events, you might want to hire a DJ or similar. Again, ask around to see if anyone can help with this or knows someone who can and ask for recommendations too.

• Cleaning up

At the end of most parties and dinners, there’s usually some tidying up and cleaning to do. Again, this will depend on the size of the party and type of the event. For a dinner party, you can do this yourself or with a friend but for a larger party you might need some professional help, especially if you’ve rented a venue. If you’ve already hired catering services, this usually includes the dishes being washed and the kitchen being cleaned.

With the above considerations, you should be able to make some savings while hosting a party for your friends and family. Having a fun evening together doesn’t need to cost the Earth and can be achieved on a wide variety of budgets with a bit of planning!

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