2. FIGURE OUT WHAT TYPE OF PARTY YOU'D LIKE TO HAVE

Party Countdown: Two to three weeks before the party

Buffet vs. sit-down dinner
Theme party
Invitations

Buffet vs. sit-down dinner

Will you be tossing freshly barbecued wings onto people's plates as they stroll past the grill, or do you envision yourself unveiling a whole chicken, grilled to perfection, to a table of expectant guests with napkins on their laps? You need to decide all this beforehand so your guests will know how to dress and whether it's crucial for them to show up at the appointed hour to claim a seat at the table.

It's also important for you to plan the type of party you want to throw around your own schedule. If you want to spend the day of your party mingling with guests and occasionally taking care of the grill, go with a buffet-style meal. If you don't have an entire Saturday to spend on this party, you can prepare dishes on the nights leading up to it and make it an outdoor dinner party.

Again, we must recommend the potluck party when dealing with food. That way, you can't get completely blamed for the food, and you won't have to waste as much time in the kitchen.

We recommend the buffet-style meal first, where you grill the food on a barbecue, and your guests bring assorted drinks, noshables, and desserts. (Yeah, you're cheap, but so what? It's your party!) While some fancy-shmancy people might only want to settle for a sit-down dinner, this option really doesn't take advantage of the fun days of summer: eating off a paper plate and making a mess of yourself.

Theme party

Sure, you can plan to just feed your guests as you let them run wild. But you also have the option of applying a theme to your party and organizing the decorations and activities around that theme.

For example:

  • A Hawaiian party: Set up a limbo stick in a corner for your guests to go nuts over. (It's almost scary how obsessive people can get about thwarting a propped-up broom handle.) Burn some tiki torches, hand out plastic leis, and grill pineapple chunks on sticks. Tell people to come wearing flowered shirts. If you really want to splurge, get plastic coconut shells and serve drinks in them.

  • An 80s party: Bust out the big hair and some Bananarama. Get people to dress 80s style (headbands, leg warmers, and Puma warm-up suits are a must). Have everybody bring one piece of 80s memorabilia (swatch watches, Rubik's Cubes, Transformers, etc), and play 80s music up the wazoo.

A few simple touches will trick your guests into thinking that the party took much more work than it actually did.

Invitations

Once you've settled on a theme, you should send out invitations to make things official. Start inviting people to your party about two weeks before it's scheduled to happen. Two weeks is enough notice, yet it's not so removed from the actual date that people will forget to come. Here are some rules on proper party-inviting so that you don't commit some egregious faux pas you didn't even know existed:

  1. Send out invitations all at once so that nobody feels like he/she was invited as an afterthought or a replacement for another guest who couldn't make it.

  2. Invite everybody yourself (as opposed to asking someone to pass the message along to others) so that everyone at the party feels okay about showing up. Plus, there are some people who are sensitive about being personally invited.

  3. If it's okay with you for your guests to bring dates or kids, indicate it on the invitations; otherwise ask your guests to alert you in advance about anybody they're bringing. In either case, you should ask your guest to RSVP with an exact number of tag-alongs. It's not unreasonable for you to know how many people to expect and prepare for.

If your party is going to be pretty informal, just pick up the phone to spread the word. Or if all your guests are technologically inclined, send out e-mail invitations (but call anyone who doesn't respond within a week, just in case).