Contrary to popular conceptions, adults are not perpetual party poopers. Partying is not an activity that is exclusively for the young. In fact, given the right kind of party, no one is too old to party.
Parties provide adults with an avenue to blow off steam and an escape from usually packed schedules.
Partying is not limited to drunken noisy and glitzy raves. You can throw a party to celebrate different occasions; it can be a birthday, reunion, bachelor/bachelorette, bridal shower, personal milestones, promotion, or business success. And plenty of party themes are compatible with all sorts of personalities and occasions.
Here is a list of great ideas for an adult shindig that you might want to try out:
Cocktail Party
A cocktail party is excellent for a casual girl’s night out or a bachelorette party. This party will involve a lot of cocktails paired with appetizers, light fare, and catching up with friends.
You can pick a signature cocktail that will be the party’s star. To cater to your guests’ diverse palates, offer a variety of common and well-loved cocktail flavors.
Cocktail parties are an excellent way of introducing friends to one another. To help ease socializing, you can ask guests to wear a name tag or provide the name tag yourself.
You can host the party on your property or you can have a bar or hotel host it for you. And since cocktail parties will involve some booze, remind your guest to be civil to each other and drink moderately.
Mixology Party
Like a cocktail party, a mixology party will also involve a lot of booze. But instead of focusing solely on cocktails like a cocktail party, a mixology party will offer a more varied mix and beverage selection.
If you or any of your guests have experience mixing drinks, then you can mix your drinks or opt to hire a mixologist. You and your guest can request the mixologists to prepare custom drinks for everyone all night long.
You can also ask the bartender to base their customized mixes on your guests’ preferred ingredients. To make things go smoother for this part, you can ask your guests in advance if they have specific mix requests, especially if their preferred ingredients take more work to come by.
Pair the drinks with happy hour snacks with good music. You can also host this party at your place or hire a local bar or hotel to provide the venue.
While everyone enjoys their custom mixes, please encourage them to have some fun, chill, talk, and dance. You can also add some drinking games to add more fun and energy to the party.
And since we’re dealing with alcohol here make sure that your guests don’t drive home drunk. Either make sure that they have a non-intoxicated designated driver or have time to sober up before they drive home.
Wine Tasting Party
A wine-tasting party is perfect for people who taste the finer things in life. This party theme is great if you are sophisticated and can spare the extra buck to afford it. Wine-tasting parties can be formal sit-down affairs, casual cocktail-style parties, or intimate dinners with close friends and family.
A wine-tasting party is basically a luncheon where you sample different bottles of wine, compare vintages and regional varieties, and enjoy some lively discussions with friends and family. To put together a wine-tasting party, you must prepare various wines and vintages.
You can get your wine from local wine clubs or a local winery. You can also hire a wine connoisseur to guide and educate you and your guests on the different vintages you’ll be sampling.
Take sips of wine and enjoy the nuances of flavor, texture, color, and smell. Serve palate cleansers like cheese, crackers, and nuts in between tastings.
You can organize the wine tasting in your home, outdoors, in hotels, or a wine cave. Whichever place you choose, just make sure that the venue won’t ruin the quality of the wine and your wine-tasting experience. Avoid areas with strong smells and odors because this will distract you from enjoying your wine-tasting experience!
Wine and Cheese Party
Like a wine-tasting party, a wine and cheese party will also involve recreational wine drinking. The main difference between the two is that wine is the center of attention at a wine-tasting party, while in a wine and cheese party, it is the wine and cheese-pairing that takes center stage.
For this party theme, you must prepare a cheeseboard with different cheeses and bottles of wine of different varieties.
Aside from the cheeses, you can also serve your guest’s different cuts of cured meats. You can also add dips and fresh herbs to the cheeseboard to add another layer of texture and flavor. And for the party’s centerpiece, you can set up a cheese tower instead of a cake.
When pairing cheeses with wines, always consider their respective flavor profiles. It is essential that a cheese and wine pair not overpower each other’s flavors. To make sure that a cheese and wine pairing will be complimentary, make sure to pair a wine with cheese of the same flavor intensity.
Pair hard cheeses like cheddar, comte, manchego, and parmigiano-reggiano with reds like cabernet sauvignon or a rioja. You can also pair hard cheese with chardonnay. Soft cheeses, on the other hand, like brie and camembert, go well with fruity reds like pinot noir or Beaujolais.
Backyard Barbeque Party
This type of party is perfect for people that love outdoor and open spaces. And in this list, this is by far the easiest to accomplish. Just set some tables outside, fire up the grill, gather family and friends, and you are all set for a backyard barbecue party.
Barbecue parties are well known for being casual and relaxed. All you need to throw it is a backyard, a grill, good food, and friends and family to enjoy it with.
A barbecue party will only be a barbecue party with some barbecue. Serve classic grilled goodies like burgers, Texas barbecues, and even some grilled vegetables. You can also ask your guests to bring some traditional backyard barbecue side dishes like mashed potatoes and coleslaw.
If you live in a place where it gets sweltering, make sure to provide a lot of refreshments. Nothing would go better with barbecue on a hot summer day than ice-cold beer for the adults and kool-aid or ice tea for the kids. It would also be great if you prepare beach umbrellas to shield your guests from the beating sun.
And if you anticipate that the barbecue party will last until night, you can prepare some smores and marshmallows. At nighttime, build a campfire, sit around the fire while playing music, and share stories with friends and families.
These are just some of the party themes for grown-ups that we’ve gathered in this blog. We hope that you find the party themes that we’ve written about to be useful.