Five Alternative Themes for Parties at Halloween

Traditional Halloween parties seem to all go the same way. There’s bobbing for apples, drinking cider, jack-o-lanterns adorning every table and lots and lots of orange and black. Been there, done that. Try something different this year for your Halloween celebration and have an alternative Halloween party your guests will be talking about for years to come!

Celebrity Party
Whether it’s Lady Gaga or Michael Jordan, everyone has a favorite celebrity they would love to be if even just for a day. Help your guest’s dreams come true by having a celebrity-themed Halloween party! Roll out the red carpet for your guests as they arrive, and be sure to take lots of pictures in true paparazzi style. Have elegant hours devours prepared, popular music and be sure to give away Hollywood awards for the best celebrity look-alikes. This theme can be done with adults and/or children and is especially good for the party host who wants to steer clear of anything scary for their Halloween party.

Vampire Party
There’s no doubt that vampires have reached insane levels of popularity over the past couple of years, and Halloween is the perfect time to throw a vampire party- no humans allowed! Make sure your guests grab their white vampire fangs and prepare for a night of fun with fellow vampires. Set the mood with organ music or have your favorite vampire movie playing. Send your guests home with candies covered in Halloween favor wrappers they won’t find anywhere else! Depending on how much you get into the vampire and blood theme, this party is still probably best for adults only.

Halloween Hoedown
Not everyone is into the spook and gore of Halloween, so why not throw a non-threatening Halloween Hoedown? Greet your cowboy-hat and boot-wearing guests at a barn entrance  and direct them to the fun inside. Play your favorite country music and leave plenty of room for line dancing. Guests old and young will get a kick out of glass boot mugs they can take home to remember the party throughout the year. This non-threatening Halloween theme will leave your guests feeling light-hearted instead of spooked out.

Decade Party
Hulahoop back to the 50’s. Flashback to the 80’s. Take your Halloween guests to a decade they haven’t visited in years. The key to this party is your groovy music CD.  Play favorite songs from your chosen decade and watch your guests reminisce about old times. Have friends and family bring pictures of themselves from past decades and put them into a box as they arrive. Display the pictures and see if your guests can pick each other out from the wall of photos. Your peace sign danglers fit any retro party and leave your guests feeling like they’ve gone back in time.

Wild about Halloween
Unleash your inner animal at a safari-themed Halloween party. Guests of all ages can dress as their favorite animal, or make things really interesting by telling people what animal they have to dress up as! Decorate your venue with animal print party balloons and literally make everything – from the invitations to the giraffe print cups – in the animal print of choice. Play a game of animal charades and watch your guests fall over in laughter as they watch each other imitate wild animals.

Let your October imagination run wild with unique, Halloween theme parties!

Host a Fab-Boo-lous Halloween Dance

A ghoulish night awaits you as Halloween approaches. Make your Halloween Dance the best it can be with our awesome themes and decorations. Begin your preparation with a visit to our Halloween Dance section.

Be sure to check out Halloween kits. They come packed with everything you need to create your spooky scene!

Every dance needs a slogan! To complete your haunted Halloween dance, choose a romantic, fun, or sinister phrase from the list below – or be daring and create your own!
• Full Moon Fantasy
• Be Witched!
• Masked Love
• Night of Magic
• Under Your Spell
• Romance in the Moonlight
• Enchantment in the Pumpkin Patch
• Howling at the Moon
• Hauntin’ Halloween Night
• Night of Mayhem
• The Midnight Hour
• Haunted by Love
• Gettin’ Spooky With It
• Trick or Treat

Invitations

Give students a sneak preview of the fun and let them know that this is a not to be missed Homecoming event by sending out unique invitations. Now is the time to choose theme wording, so you can carry your theme through your decorating and your favors. A few fun suggestions for the Halloween spirit: “You Are Cordially Invited to Attend Your Own Wake!,” “Warning – Attend This Homecoming at Your Own Risk!” If you are sending out traditional paper or imprinted invites, consider sprinkling some 3-D spider confetti inside.

Decorations

Give your Homecoming Dance guests spooky Halloween thrills with the decorating ideas below!
• Have the students enter the building through a haunted tunnel using black corrugated paper. With duck tape and a staple gun, form a “tunnel” shape with the paper.
• For fun, hang some black streamers from the tops of the tunnel in a couple of spots to give students the creeps. Place spiders on the floor for them to crawl through.
• Hang a few glow-in-the-dark items in the tunnel such as glow eyes to add to the excitement.
• Greet students with a very scary Grim Reaper. This will scare the pants off of even the most enthusiastic student!
• Cobwebs are one of the most inexpensive, high-impact decorating items you can use to create an authentic atmosphere for your scariest of parties. Hang them throughout your event room – fasten them to the corners of tables, around arches and columns, and across the stage. You can never have too many of these around!
• Finally, remember that lighting is everything! You can choose to go with candle lighting only, which is very mysterious but can be a little dangerous. Another option is to use black light bulbs wherever possible to create an atmosphere that is to die for! Place a strobe light in one corner of your room, or in a separate room for a spine-tingling effect!

Tableware

• Start your table off with a covering of black gossamer to keep the atmosphere creepy and dark. Next, add one large carved out pumpkin and two smaller pumpkins in the center of the table. Don’t carve faces on the pumpkins but instead fill them with water. Add our mist maker inside the pumpkins for a spooky mist – all without chemicals!
• Place some tissue grass mats around the pumpkins and across the center of the table, letting it hang down from the sides of the table.
• By placing one or two faux ravens perched on the pumpkins and grass mats you will add an interesting and eerie appeal to your table.
• For place cards, we offer coffin favor boxes that can be personalized with students’ names. At each table setting, place a headstone with a candy pumpkin and a small patch of Cobwebs.
• For your plates, if you choose to go simple, check out our Gold 9″ Paper Plates along with our black cutlery. Dress them up a bit by adding our Halloween napkin assortment to the ensemble. Tie the napkins with the silverware up in a bundle and tie with a small bunch of raffia or ribbon. Add a clip-on crawlie to each bundle and scatter a couple of spiders on each plate as well.

Food Ideas

• Pumpkin pie, pumpkin smoothies, pumpkin cupcakes
• Trick-or-treat candy

Favors

Give students favors they can use during the party … this will add excitement and fun!
• Halloween mugs go great with the napkin assortment and are perfect favors when filled with Halloween candy or goodies.
• Serve a chilling witch’s brew to students in personalized glassware imprinted with your theme, or in one of our inexpensive stadium cups. When the dance is over, the can take them home as an extra-special souvenir!
• There are several styles of photo favors that can be personalized with your special wording and design. This is a particularly good favor idea if you will have a photo setting at your party to take pictures of the couples enjoying their enchanted evening together.
• Personalized napkins that complement your theme are always a hit! We offer a large selection of dinner, luncheon and beverage napkins in an impressive palette of 20 colors. We also offer a wide range of ink colors, as well as a metallic foil, holographic foil, prismatic foil or a traditional ink imprint.
• Napkins can be laid out on a buffet table, or can be displayed at each place setting. Place napkins in the center of each place setting at an angle, or unfold them and place them in glasses for a tall dramatic look. The napkins can also be tied (and bundled with plastic cutlery) with a multitude of items to match your theme. Try curling ribbon, gossamer streamers, ric-rac or ribbon.