Planning a Graduation Party Tips

When your son or daughter is graduating from any phase of life, it’s a perfect opportunity to throw a party and to let them know how much you love them and how proud you are of them. The biblical patriarch Abraham even threw a “great feast” for his son Isaac the day he graduated from nursing. Those folks loved to party! (See Genesis 21:8) You don’t have to go quite that far, but you can have a party for your son or daughter when they graduate from preschool, or after the final bell rings on their years in elementary school. Certainly you should throw a “great feast” for them when they graduate from high school—and definitely celebrate when they finish college. They have put in countless hours of work and deserve a party!

Planning a graduation party is not much different from planning a birthday party or any informal “mix and mingle and munch” gathering. As usual, you will need to decide on what food you’ll be serving. Now, unless this absolutely has to be a surprise party, you would be best to ask your son or your daughter what kind of food they and their friends would like to eat. But chances are you already know their favorites—so go with that. And get creative with the dessert! For example, bake a two-part cake in the shape of their graduating year, and ice it in their school colors.

Okay, you’ve decided on the menu, so now you need to finalize the guest list so that you know how much food to prepare—or how much soda and snacks to buy. Again, unless you want to surprise your child, it’s best to ask him or her who they’d like to invite. Of course, if they want to invite most of their classmates, you’ll have to help them trim the list. If you really do think you can pull off a surprise party then you’ll have to get one of their closest school friends to help you come up with a list of who to invite and, equally as important, who not to invite. As your child becomes a young adult, they may have good friends who weren’t necessarily in the class they just graduated from, but whom they’d want to invite anyway—such as old buddies, neighbors, workmates or fellow club members. So make sure you don’t miss anyone out.

Now that you have a final guest list, along with each person’s contact information, you need to get on the phone (or on the computer) and begin inviting them. If it’s a surprise party, be sure to let them know. You don’t want them to slip up and tell the guest of honor that they’re looking forward to attending their grad party.

Once the guests have been invited, you should give some thought as to whether you’ll be decorating or not. There are lots of decorations to choose from these days, but even if you opt for a simple, no-fuss décor, you’ll probably still want balloons and a banner. Even if you’ll be handwriting the “Congratulations Grad!” sign, you’ll still have to buy the balloons and the banner material, felt pens, etc. So draw up a list and buy the supplies ahead of time.

By the way, you don’t need to go with just a graduation theme even though it’s a grad party. If your guests are game, you could even throw a costume party or a luau or whatever.  The main thing is that the celebration is both fun and memorable. After all, your grad has finally come to the end of years of studying, homework and tests and needs to unwind and have some fun with friends. They’ll soon be facing a whole new phase of life with more work and maybe more study, but tonight or this afternoon … it’s time to party!