Theme: Luck & Fortune
Location: Our home
Costume: Samara from The Ring (me), A Gentleman from BtVS: Hush (husband)
I’m not exactly sure how I came up with the idea for a trivia game. It was something I was tossing around in my head, along with a few other ideas for this year’s party. Let me tell you, conceiving a trivia game is more difficult than it sounds. But more about that in a few minutes.
This year our party started with a grand entrance. Guests were met at the front door by two signs, one at the front door declaring to enter around the side of the house and a second pointing to the side gate saying “this way for horror.” My sister with a fine arts degree drew the “this way for horror” sign - a cloaked skeleton pointing a bony finger towards the gate. It looked far cooler than anything I could have done. At the gate we had a skull on a spike in the ground – the skull flashed on & off (until later in the evening when my battery died). On the gate itself was a hanging skeleton with bat wings holding a welcome sign. It was decked out in orange and purple lights.
I opened the gate and guests walked by my husband who was hiding in the dog run. He’d jump up and bang a chain against the chain link side of the dog run and yell. Then they’d walk by a hanging skeleton (and a strobe light) who said things like “hey! Nice costume!” and a few feet later a ghoul under a black light that moaned spookily. Then, as they passed the corner of the deck, two of my (freezing cold) sisters would jump up and yell “boo!” (and then usually giggle afterwards). Finally the last thing guests saw before they entered the house was a small stone well in the middle of the yard with another ‘Samara’ (dummy) crawling out of it. She was lit up by a second strobe light and accented by a fog machine. On the patio were several dog bones displayed for creepy effect. Guests then entered the house through the back door.
In the house was a display of various fortune-telling mechanisms. I had a bag of runes, an abbreviated tarot deck (only 13 specifically selected cards), a numerology packet, a small book and flyer on palm-reading, and a book on astrology and a book on relationships (a combination of astrology and numerology). I had displays for the runes and tarot cards explaining how to perform readings. This was obviously the ‘fortune’ part of the party’s theme.
I also had two other small displays which were important for the ‘luck’ part of the evening later on. One display listed 4 other festivals around the world similar to Halloween, and one listed the top 10 phobias as listed on The Phobia Website (#1, arachnophobia; #10, necrophobia).
‘Luck’ was a trivia game testing Halloween and horror movie knowledge. We played ‘Family Feud’ style with everyone divided into 2 teams. One member of each team would come forward and we’d read a question – the team members would clap if they thought they knew the answer. The first person who clapped got to give their answer – if they were correct the question went to their team (usually each question had about 5 correct answers). If the first team gave 3 incorrect responses, the other team got the chance to steal the points for the question. Make sense? A couple of sample questions were: “Name a well-known actor, living or dead, who is famous primarily for playing the role of a monster or creature in American or UK horror movies” and “Name typical characteristics of a haunted house.” Almost all of the answers came from web searches, and credit was given to the appropriate websites when the questions were read.
The losing team received “death” – a bag of ghostie peeps and skeleton rings, skeleton hanging decorations, and skeleton erasers. The winning team received a bag of “fabulous prizes” – for the most part very cheap Halloween costume pieces like funny-looking glasses and temporary tattoos. The winning team also got the chance to add some candy to their pot by having 2 people try to guess the answers to a final set of 10 multiple choice questions.
Overall feedback:
We had a mixed crowd at this party, including some friends we had not seen for several years. We also had the misfortune of holding our party at exactly the same time as Game 1 of the North American Series (as one friend pointed out, the game hardly represents the world). One of our home teams was playing. So we had to have the game on for the first couple hours of the party but oh well, it made some of the guests happy and I survived. This was also our first at-home Halloween party featuring a (friend’s) baby.
We noticed much alcohol was consumed, which we are assuming indicates a good time was had by several. Guests cheered on each other during the trivia game, and one guest commented even the awarded “death” seemed pretty cool. All of our guests got along well, including the baby and the dog, and we had some fairly creative costumes. Our home decorations received several compliments. We noticed a few people reading each other’s palms, and others reading through the numerology packets. The party itself was called “fun” and “awesome” but – since our friends and family are all very nice people – I believe they would have said the same thing if the party had been boring and horrible.
What we learned:
1) If you are going to do a grand entrance, be a little more organized about it. Possibly hire actors. I think maybe one group of people actually went through the full effect of the grand entrance. Otherwise we were plagued with things like motion-sensors not tripping, ‘performers’ not being in place, etc. If we ever do it again, we will get many people in the house first, then take a big group through the walk together, giving the performers time to get in place and also allowing a guide to go ahead and make sure the sensors got tripped. I think people appreciated the effort, but overall it was incredibly chaotic and stressful for the hosts. I did like the idea of a walk a lot and think we will do it again, it will just be done a little differently.
2) Be ready an hour before the party. We are ALWAYS ready early. Last year we spent almost 2 full hours sitting around waiting for guests to arrive. This year folks were either early or exactly on time. This also contributed to chaos. I am going to strongly consider hiring caterers for the next party.
3) If you want something done right, or in a way that remotely makes sense, do it yourself. That may sound bitter, but it’s all I’m (we’re) saying.
4) One of these years, we’ll wear costumes that don’t require a lot of make-up. It adds a lot to preparation time. But everyone said we looked good, even those who were unfamiliar with both The Ring and Buffy and who just thought we were ‘the dead couple.’
5) Details matter. I think I mentioned this last year, but people really notice the details in my decorating. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me – it also makes the 3 weeks of decorating and re-decorating worth it.
6) Have several garbarges. Especially if you have candy with wrappers. People will want to throw things away and it’s a good idea to have a garbage near the cauldron of candy.
7) You can have a party a week after you return from vacation. Just be prepared to spend every night of the week before the party cleaning or doing something else to prepare. Have a lot of lists. Be prepared and you can do it.
8) Next year, I think the winning team is going to be awarded a "pot." Buying prizes is fricking expensive. So I think even if we have the party at home next year we will have guests contribute $5 or something to the reward, and then the winning team can split the money.