Halloween for the win
It’s almost that time of year again. Halloween is just around the corner and preparations are already underway to celebrate the spookiest night of the year. From the crazy and colourful costumes, to trick or treating and the endless parties. Halloween presents a rare opportunity for people to unwind, let loose and pretend to be a cute furry creature or a vegetable for one night. Halloween parties are just as fun to plan as they are to enjoy, but it can be quite a stressful affair if one doesn’t know what to do or how to go about putting one together.
The Halloween party to-do list
The first thing to do is to pick a theme. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of scary themes to choose from, that can transform the ambience of any venue into the spookiest place to be on Halloween. A great theme sets the entire mood of the party and whether its monsters or ghosts, witches or mummies, it should have a fun side to it. Nobody wants to attend a party that’s completely scary and downright terrifying. The goal is not to give guests nightmares but to provide a fun experience. Also, as a host, choose a costume that fits perfectly with the theme of the party.
Next thing to do is to decorate. Once a theme is chosen, decorating becomes easier. A quick online search will provide information on where to find the best Halloween decorations to order. Accessories like tombstones, animated spiders, skeletons and the likes make for really good party props and give off that spooky effect for which they were designed. Another way to really engage guests at the party, especially those spending the night, is to place selections of some of the scariest books of all time in strategic locations around the house or in their bedrooms. Classic horror numbers like Anne Rice’s, “Interview with a Vampire”, Susan Hill’s, ‘The Woman in Black” and “The Element Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells” by Judika Illes, are perfect pieces for this. They can all be found at The Works, a major discount retailer of value gifts, toys, books, and stationery. There will always be that person who is drawn to scary stories, and there can also be scheduled a brief time to read one out.
Halloween food is unlike any other kind of food. It may be the same and taste the same as any other regular meal, but it is definitely not supposed to look the same. The perfect Halloween party is catered with the creepiest and gruesome looking food and drinks designed to emulate the morbid theme of the night. Dye drinks black and purple to look like potions and red to look like blood. Candy corn that looks like a bloody mess of extracted teeth can be acquired at the candy stores. Spring rolls that look like chopped off rotten finger, olives and cherries for eyeballs floating around in a green liquid-filled punch bowl, spooky ghost cookies and a massive cake shaped like a human skull are all instances of food that grace Halloween tables.
Finally, the one thing that really sets the party off right is the right kind of music. These days, anything goes, but for the pure Halloween haunted house experience, the music must be just right. The sinister tone of the music accentuates the dark and scary ambience of the entire room. Whether it’s a slow number or an upbeat tempo, the choice of music wraps things up pretty nicely. One can always go to the local record store and have a mix made just for the party.
Conclusion
A Halloween party is one of the best kinds of parties to plan because the entire process from start to finish can be pure fun, especially if there is prior knowledge on what to do. For an event that is celebrated only once a year, it is not only necessary to get it right but also to have fun doing it and create wonderful spooky memories to last till the following year.
