Things that went well / badly

[cjsmith]

1. The guest list had a big, consuming interest in common. MAN did people talk. I think this alone made the party a success.
2. We had enough wine. It is really handy that I had a bunch beforehand.
3. The cats didn't try to escape. They were actually quite social.
4. Tablecloths that drape close to the floor can hide a multitude of clutter-related sins.
5. The furniture layout with lots of room to move around worked very well. (We'd done a fair bit of rearranging.)
6. The trash and recyclables containers were sufficient and were well-marked enough that people found them with no trouble.

Not So Good:
1. Amount of food was way too much. This contributed to...
2. My feet. Food prep is not a sitting-down activity, and a lot of it is not stuff I could do ahead of time. By the time guests arrived I'd been on my feet for eight hours. I was in way too much pain to be a "good hostess" and mingle, bring people drinks, etc. I tried, but not very hard.
3. White wine was pulled from the fridge too early, so it warmed up too much. Keep extras in the fridge longer. On the flip side, the soft drinks can be pulled out into ice chests much earlier. (Fridge space management was a huge issue.)
4. (minor) People asked for permission to open wine. Next time we could put up a "feel free!" sign. We had signs on everything else!

Comments

[eichin.livejournal.com]

So now that you've pulled it off, consider having another party "soon"... maybe a "fight the winter doldrums" party in a month, or something. Now that you know how much to scale back, it'll be that much easier. (The chocolate parties ended up taking less preparation over time, as they grew in scale :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what we're hoping to do. If this gets to be a habit, we'll get better at it and we'll have all the nonconsumables handy already.