Be My (Friend’s) Guest (of Honor)
My friend George and his boyfriend came a-callin’ over Memorial Day, and what with it being the start of summer and all, I planned a jam-packed weekend of F.U.N. for us. As previously noted, when a pal comes to town, I tend to go to town with a big ol’ celebration in their honor. But with everything we had going on, there was little time for party prep, and I was so crazed with work before they got here that advance planning wasn’t in the picture neither.
Then my friend Ben said he was having people over for dinner that Saturday, and would my pals like to come too? Fabulous. We got in from a busy day of L.A.-ing, showered, dressed up and went out to dinner–at Ben’s house. Candles were glowing, wine was flowing, jazz was going… And then, of course, there was the meal, including a simple green salad, ceviche (yes, he made freakin’ ceviche), DIY fish tacos and a peach cobbler (made and brought by moi). So. Good.
The ten guests, most of whom were mutual friends whom (if I may use the word “whom” twice in one sentence) George had met before, bantered and giggled and ate and ate and then ate more. It was a stellar evening, and best of all, it gave us all the chance to mix it up a bit–after hanging out with the same couple of people all weekend long, a little fresh company is generally more than welcome–and show off my cool friends to each other. Plus, the evening was more intimate than just another dinner at just another restaurant, not to mention free, save the couple of bottles of wine we brought over.
And with that, I decided to start throwing parties when good friends’ friends were in town. Starting with Ben’s new girlfriend, in town from New York. Stay tuned!
Be My Guest (of Honor)
In recent years I’ve taken to a new tradition: throwing a party when a friend comes to visit. Hey, you gotta clean the house anyhow, might as well invite some people over! Plus, that way you can introduce an old friend to new ones, which is always entertaining to watch, and your friend gets to be the center of attention in a low-key, birthday-girl kinda way (as opposed to a public-speaking-to-an-auditorium-full-of-strangers kinda way). Announce the guest of honor in your invite and propose a toast to her during the party. Introduce her to everybody. Serve her favorite dishes or cocktails. A couple of years ago, I had a friend who wrote a baking cookbook for kids come visit, so I ordered her book (which I’d been meaning to do anyway), FedExed it to myself, and made cupcakes out of it to serve at the dinner party I was having in her honor the next night. A bit of extra effort, yeah, but how often do you get a good excuse to make a big deal over the people who are important to you?
Channeling Julie, Your Inner Cruise Director
You know, like Julie, the cruise director on the Love Boat? You can have a reeeeeally nice boat with fabulous food and a k-razy bartender with an awesome mo and great special guests like Charo, but it’s Julie who introduces everyone, grins her gigantic grin and jump-starts the party. Yahhh! How do you think Doc ever got any action? Julie, yo, settin’ him up. (Remember the one with the gorgeous woman with the veil who was all embarrassed about some facial scar, but Doc fell for her, proving that people could see past the scar to the Special Person She Really Was? For some reason that one made a big impression on me as a youth.)
Anyhow, so your goal is to find your inner Julie and get her workin’ the room at your next party. As confessed in my previous post, this is not my strong suit. I overplan and thus am invariably behind when guests show up. Bad hostess! Instead, be like Julie. Sidle up to guests and mention how one just got back from Jakarta or how both of them are mad Jimmy Cliff fans. Even if one of them doesn’t even know who Jimmy Cliff is! Kidding. Only mention how both of them are Jimmy Cliff fans if both of them really like Jimmy Cliff. Look, the point is, give ‘em something to talk about besides their freakin’ major, right?
Hey, I know how it is. By the time I’m actually having a party, I’m usually pretty wiped from all the planning and still trying to put the finishing touches on everything, so I tend to let guests fend for themselves and make their own fun. But more and more, I’m coming to the conclusion that guests need a lot more to have a dynamite time than your just providing all the trappings for them to do so. Yeah, it’s great if you have amazing canapes and signature cocktails and a custom dance mix, but many guests are still pretty helpless without their cruise director helping them figure out how to really let go and live it up. Even if you’re hosting a small dinner party where everyone knows each other, your guests are taking their cue from you as the leader of the evening. Remember, you are the Model Bon(ne) Vivant(e) here. Are you hiding in the kitchen, slaving away, stressed and ready for Calgon to take you away already? Or are you relaxed, fancy-free and bubbly as Goldie Hawn circa Laugh-In? Let your guests know what kind of evening this is gonna be. Why not dispense with the formalities and jump right into strip poker? Okay, maybe not, but you get the idea.
So this is hereby my official resolution to stop trying to be so perfect and make my party to-dos more manageable so next time I’m already long since ready when the first guest rings the doorbell…or, if for some reason I’m not, to stop whatever I’m doing (adding frosting florets to the cake? touching up my chipped nail polish? looking for my go-go boots?) and get out there and enjoy myself, dammit. Julie would be so proud!
My Eyes Are Bigger than My Stomach
Which is why my stomach isn’t smaller.
I have this friend who never quite finishes a meal, leaving behind a crust, a few bites, whatever. You could find him starving in the desert and give him a falafel sandwich and he’d leave the tomato on his plate. (Secret confession: When he comes over, I often just add his leftovers to the rest of what didn’t get eaten, since hey, I worked hard making that and want as much of it for lunch tomorrow as I can get, thank you.)
Now me, I’m a plate polisher-offer. I rarely leave a crumb behind since I just plain love food. But it’s not just food. My eyes are often also bigger than even my formidable party-planning skills. Witness my beach party post. I should really just freakin’ take it down a notch, but I get so excited I want to do everything, and then it bites me in the butt when I’m not really ready yet but people start arriving. Which has happened at pretty much every party I’ve ever thrown. Might as well get the fact that I’m a huge sham right out in the open, eh?
Still, the way I figure it, it’s easy to be organized when your idea of a party is throw a few hot dogs on the grill and crack open a six-pack. I encourage you to aim higher! Just maybe not Kiliminjaro high. How do you strike the right balance? I’m taking a note out of my friend Dina’s playbook: Make a list of things you want to do for the party and prioritize it into must-dos and would-be-nices. That way, you can concentrate on the must-dos first and get through as many of the would-be-nices as you can before it’s time for you to hop in the shower and get dolled up for your own party. Some of your nices might not get done. But that’s okay! Better to be ready than perfect.
1,001 Nights, Now with Real Sand!
So today I’m on the beach in Santa Monica with my egalitarian life partner Kent and pals Ben and Dave, and I say how I’ve always wanted to have a party on the beach, but I worry that with all that open space, it’d feel dead, and besides, it’d be too cold at night to do it. Ben took the bait and swam with it, suggesting nearby Dockweiler Beach for the bonfire angle. Then Kent suggested a tent for that Bedouin appeal. And I was off, racing home to investigate local beach rules, price tents and measure tables.
Getting a beach house this summer and wanna knock the flip-flops off your beach party guests? Here’s what I’ve learned so far:
- Find out what time your beach closes. Los Angeles County beaches close at 10, so we’ll probably start the party at 6, knowing people will show up a little late.
- Investigate what requires a permit for your beach. On ours, for example, you need a permit for tents over 10×10′ and/or rented tents (as well as for a whole ton of other stuff that doesn’t apply to me–school field trips, live bands, etc.)
- Check out Craigslist or Ebay for used tents on the cheap. The least expensive 10×10′ tent I could find new is $219, but I found a barely used one on Craigslist for $95, which is probably cheaper than renting one anyway ($86 from a local party rental place) assuming they charge delivery and/or labor fees.
- Keep in mind that many tents available for purchase (as opposed to rentals) are not waterproof, so don’t count on it as Plan B for your intimate beach wedding or set it up the night before your party if an overnight thunderstorm is in the forecast.
- Get an easy-up instant tent so you aren’t sweating getting the tent up for one night. One disgruntled reviewer on Home Depot’s site complained that the handsome $399 tent he’d bought took him five hours to put up. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be freaking out quite enough about your party (particularly one like this, requiring Extreme Advance Planning and Organization) as it is without taking on a an outdoor structure building project. The easy-up tents tend to be rather boring and unjazzy-looking, but they’re also cheaper than the cooler versions and, well, easier to put up. Still, just to torture yourself, take a moment to drool over what your tent won’t look like. Kent and I so wanted to get one of these tents for our wedding, but then we found out that it’d be something like $10,000 to rent a tent that could accommodate 150 people. Oh man. That was a sad day.
- Decide on a theme. I’m thinking (cobra flute, please) 1,001 Nights, Now with Real Sand! You might also do a luau or a clambake. Hey, the world is your oyster, cap’n. Anyhow, for my party, I’m thinking ethnic cloth, floor pillows, Moroccan lanterns (which are only like $30 from World Market, dontcha know).
- Even if your beach doesn’t have limits on tent size, consider that the bigger your tent, the harder it will blow over. I’m not even sure a 10×10′ tent will be immune from beachside gusts, but Dave claims offshore winds die down at night. Hmm. I’ll let you know how that part goes. When we were planning our wedding, I looked into getting a tent on the beach and found one company wouldn’t even do it. The company we went with would (though we ended up going without to save $), but they charged a little more to add extra rigging for additional security against the wind. Granted, we got married in the afternoon, but still. When Kent and I went on Our First Camping Trip(TM) last September, we set up our brand-new wedding-gift tent like two little happy campers, left the campsite the next day, and came back after dark to find our tent–gone! We were camping on sea bluffs in Big Sur and when the winds came up they pulled the tent poles right out of the (sandy) ground and started blowing it down the bluffs. Fortunately a neighbor camper snagged it and stuck it on the side of our campsite with a rock on it, but let me assure you, it was not fun to set that thing up after dark. At least it didn’t rain. Anyhow, my point is, don’t underestimate wind’s power to blow stuff.
- Remember, most beaches do not allow fires. You can’t even have tiki torches on Santa Monica or Venice Beach. We’re gonna bring candles for inside the tent, though, and make luminarias to create a pathway to the tent. Most tents are flame-retardant, but still, exercise caution. Don’t get crazy and try to put an outdoor heat lamp in there neither–danger, Will Robinson.
- Figure out your beverages plan, because chances are very slim that you’ll be legally allowed to serve alcohol. I’m thinking about serving some kind of “punch.” Speaking of bevvies, many beaches don’t allow glass either. LA beaches, however, don’t seem to have this rule, so I plan to bring real dishes and glasses (albeit not wine glasses, since we don’t want to give ourselves away) to make the evening feel special rather than beach-barbecuey (not that there’s anything wrong with that). And also cuz I’m green and stuff.
- Decide how many people you can fit in your tent. I figure for a 10×10′ tent, I could fit my folding table and 10 chairs. But if I make it BYOP (bring your own pillow) and lay down a bunch of brightly colored patterned cloth on the sand and ask people to sit cross-legged, I’m thinking we could fit 15, maybe even 20. Don’t get carried away with your guest list, though, since the more people who come, the more you have to bring.
- If your beach doesn’t have a pubic restroom, you’d better have a house on the sand.
- Plan the heck out of the night. Remember that you will need to bring everything. Detail-oriented lists are key. So is borrowing a sizable SUV from your friend Ben to get it all there in one fell swoop. Serving foods that work at room temperature is easiest, though you could rock the chafing dish if you’re that sort of person. And if you are, I salute you.
Got any more beach shindig tips? Do spill!
