Six Awesome Ways to Greet your Guests!
Photography by Candi Noble
This post is sponsored by Evite®.
I am so excited to finally be sharing MINT’s six favorite ways to greet your guests! I have been wanting to write about this, and I think now is the perfect time.
As a party stylist, I always get the same question from my clients: “How can I make sure my guests will feel greeted?”. To this, my answer always is…
"Start with the invitation!"
For this blog post, I am going to walk you through how I incorporated these six ways into my niece’s 10th birthday party.
1.Invitation
As I mentioned above, I always think the invitation is the first thing you need to work on when planning your party. The invitation really sets up not only the theme, but also the mood and style of the party you are going to host. The invitation should always be one that appeals to you the most; the one that makes YOU excited about YOUR party.
How awesome is that?
With kids in the family, we’re planning multiple events a year – kids birthdays, holiday parties, dinner events… And I love knowing that I can pick as many pretty Premium invitations for all of our special events with the new pass.
Going back to Sophia, my niece, she didn’t want to host a “themed” party, so we decided to think about what her favorite things were in hopes of finding something to be inspired by so we could start planning the party.
She absolutely loves confetti and colors, so those two things became the foundation our party theme.
For that, this Premium Evite® invitation below shown was perfect. The mix of fun colors and confetti on the cake made my niece really excited, so that's when I knew we picked out the right one: the one that made HER excited about her party!
2. Welcoming the Guests
Once the Evite® invitation was sent out, we started planning how we would welcome her friends when they arrived at her house.
Sophia is such a sweet little girl, and for some reason she loves watching her mom restore old furniture, so when I told her that we could use items around the house to set up a little welcome area, she was overjoyed! She brought down a chair that she has in her bedroom which her mom had painted a cute coral-pink color. We tied a blue polka-dot balloon and added some paper chains to the balloon string. We also wrapped some empty boxes with cute wrapping paper and a white bow and topped it off with a party hat. Lastly, we precut some letters by hand and made a banner saying, “Welcome to my Party”.
You don’t have to spend a lot money on this, but it definitely makes your guests excited about the party as soon as they arrive.
3. Choose the right desserts
When choosing the right desserts, think about your guests. Am I serving the best options for them? Because let’s face it, no matter the occasion you are celebrating, what age you are turning, or if you are vegan or gluten free, we all want to know what’s for dessert.
So, don’t be shy and ask your guests... Are there any food allergies? Or special dietary restrictions?
If not, go ahead and get anything you want... I always like to tell my clients that I prefer variety over quantity when talking about desserts.
For this specific party we only had one guest that needed gluten-free desserts. We asked the little girl's mom to show us where we could get some yummy gluten free cupcakes and she pointed us to the perfect bakery where she always gets her own.
The little girl’s mom was so surprised to hear us asking where we could buy the gluten free cupcakes for her daughter! She said that no one had ever paid attention to her daughter's needs at a party! She felt so welcome and cared for... I would say that both mom and her little girl felt so special!
I do want to say that this was a party for 10 girls and that made it easier for us to go into that amount of detail. It won’t be easy if you are hosting a big event like a wedding, but whenever your event is small and you can easily make things happen, why not go an extra mile to make sure your guests feel invited?
We offered a cake that was totally inspired by Evite®'s invitation, some regular and gluten free cupcakes, cake pops and macaroons.
4. Enjoy the day of the party
I know, I know... You are going to say, "How can you enjoy the day of the party when you have a ton of last-minute things to do?!", right? Well my friend, it all goes back to good planning or hiring help, but regardless if you are a good or bad planner, or if you will or will not hire someone to do it all for you, your attitude is so important!
Sophia was already very excited the day of the party, so she didn’t have to worry about anything, but the adults were running getting the house ready.
Running around like crazy trying to get everything under control is no fun! Just try to ENJOY IT!! Your family and friends will appreciate a good attitude and smiles! Take a deep breath and think about the fact that the purpose of celebrating with friends is to share a good time, laugh a lot and be surrounded by good company.
Enjoy preparing and decorating every detail, I will assure you that the party will go smoother and that the positive attitude will pass along to the guests.
5. Decorations and the unexpected
As a party stylist, I cannot deny that I always LOVE to see a well decorated party and I truly think that guests LOVE it too. And here I am going to repeat that you really don’t have to spend a lot of money to make your party look pretty.
A little bit of pre-work can make it look gorgeous.
For this party I hand-cut triangle banners out of some cute wrapping paper that I happened to have at home and that matched the Evite®'s invitation perfectly! It also happened to be double-sided, so I got two designs in one!
I found this adorable letter banner that said “PARTY TIME”, and
I also got some blue cardstock paper and cut some little rectangles and sewed them together to create the banner.
I also added more banners to the rim of the table.
Take a look at the cake's candles – they perfectly match Evite®'s invitation graphic.
Another great detail, right?
I love the unexpected details! They make any celebration more memorable and you keep the surprises coming throughout the party. Let’s take a look...
Instead of regular cups, I used mini glass bottles and added 2 straws instead of one, then used a yellow cupcake wrapper to hold the bottle... How cute is that!
Another thing that was unexpected and that worked well with the 10-year-old girls was the addition of party horns, party hats and candy wands! The girls remembered using these items when they were little! So nostalgic and fun!
Whenever hosting an event, think about which items you can come up with that will be in line with your guests and your party.
6. Sending your guests home with a nice Thank You bag.
Let the party continue, even if the party is over!
We prepared some paper bags and stamped the word "THANKS" on a white piece of paper then glued it to the bags. We filled them up with stickers, mini gel pens, mini notebooks, and some cute erasers as well! I used a pink galvanized tray to hold them.
I hope you all enjoyed this blog post and that it will make it easier for you to greet your guests!
Believe me when I say that if you follow these tips, your parties will never be forgotten!
And because Evite® is such an awesome company and LOVES parties as much as we do, they are giving us this special code for one additional month of the Evite® Annual Premium Pass, so you can send invitations all year long and take advantage of the unique designs they created just for YOU!
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These are some of my favorite Evite® Premium Invitations
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