How to Plan a Party Budget
Making a budget for your upcoming house party is one of the least glamorous aspects of hosting a celebration. Despite this, getting an idea of how much you’re willing to spend is crucial for maintaining your peace of mind and planning a celebration that everyone will enjoy.
Once you create a budget for your party, it sets the stage for all of your subsequent planning. From choosing a theme to buying food and decorations, the nature of your party depends on your budget. With that said, creating a financial plan for your upcoming event doesn’t have to be a complicated process. At AUXGOD, our team has hosted more than its fair share of parties. So here is our simple guide to creating a budget for your next house party!
Step 1: Understand Your Finances
Before you can start planning anything, you need to take a look at your finances. The best party is the one you can afford to host! There’s no point in hosting a shindig that leaves a hole in your wallet and causes you anxiety for the next few months.
People often have the misconception that the more fancy and extravagant a party is, the more enjoyable it becomes. Although having fancy foods and expensive cocktails at your event will marginally improve the vibe of your celebration, these things aren’t as important as many party hosts think they are.
A party’s success depends upon its atmosphere and guests – not the food or decorations. You can have the most expensive refreshments and a lavish location. But if you don’t invite the right people with the right attitudes, your shindig will fail. While this truth sounds a bit harsh, it’s actually a good thing! It means that having a low party budget doesn’t mean you can’t have a fun time with friends while also keeping your event financially friendly.
Once you’ve established an idea for the general budget of your party, it’s time to take a closer look at the specifics of your event!
Step 2: Create a Guest List
The cost of your party is directly impacted by the size of your guest list. The more people you invite to your celebration, the more food and drinks you’ll need for the event. With that being the case, it makes sense that optimizing your guest list is the first crucial step to throwing a budget-friendly celebration that everyone will enjoy!
As you’ll see later in this blog, you can still throw an affordable party with a large guest list, but it will take a bit more creativity and “financial acrobatics” to pull off. As a general rule of thumb, the smaller your party budget is, the more conservative you should keep your guest list.
Step 3: Find an Appropriate Theme
The theme of your event might not seem like something important to consider when planning a party budget. Although the theme of your celebration might not seem like a significant thing to consider when planning a party budget, it can make a huge difference.
Your party’s theme will often determine things like the decorations, food, drinks, activities, and even costumes that you have to prepare for your celebration – all things that you’ll have to spend some money on! In other words, being mindful of your budget when choosing your theme is a crucial part of throwing a party that’s fun for your guests and friendly to your wallet at the same time. The less catered foods, lavish decorations, and costumes that your party theme requires, the less costly it will be!
Step 4: Plan Food and Drinks Wisely
Snacks and refreshments are a key aspect of any worthwhile party. Unfortunately, getting food and drinks for your event can quickly become an expensive ordeal – especially if you have a large guest list. Here are a couple of ways to cut down on your food bill when throwing your next shindig:
Make Food In Bulk
One of the easiest ways to cut down on the cost of food and drinks for your party is to create them in bulk. The beauty of making foods in bulk is that you can use budget-friendly components to make enough for all of your party guests while keeping costs to a minimum!
There are tons of excellent party foods out there that you can make in large quantities while using affordable, basic ingredients. Many delicious recipes like chili, butter chicken, spaghetti and meatballs, and even pizza can be made in bulk from the comfort of your kitchen! Making food in bulk is also an excellent strategy when you have a large guest list.
If you have a larger budget (or a smaller guest list), you can host a party with more gourmet food choices like steak, seafood, and so on. In general, the more catered towards each guest your food is, the more expensive it will be.
Offer More Filling Refreshments
Another way to keep food costs within your party budget is to offer more filling snacks. The more satiating your party foods are, the less each guest will have to eat before they feel full. In turn, this means every ounce of food you offer at your celebration will go farther than if you have less filling food options.
How can you know whether or not a food is filling, you ask? Fortunately, scientists and dieticians asked the same question, and they’ve done a lot of research into what exactly makes foods seem “filling.” The answer: Protein!
Dietary research studies have shown that protein is the most filling macronutrient. This means that if you want your party guests to feel satiated faster, you should offer foods that are high in protein like red meat, chicken, tofu, nuts, and even broccoli!
Have a Potluck
The last trick you can use for keeping your food costs within your party budget is to simply get help from your guests! In other words, throw a potluck. Have every party guest bring a food item, snack, or drink from their culture or country. Before you know it, you’ll have a table full of various foods from many diverse cultures!
There are many reasons why potlucks are such a great party idea. Firstly, they help you save money on food, which can often be the largest expense of any party. Secondly, people love to showcase their cultural backgrounds and favourite foods – a potluck is the perfect way to accomplish that. Last but not least, throwing a potluck party at your house minimizes the number of dishes you need to clean after the shindig because people will either take their plates home or bring the food in disposable containers. Not to mention the fact that you might just discover a new favourite food that you've never heard of before!
Whether or not you’re on a tight budget, hosting a potluck is an incredibly affordable and rewarding experience for both you and your guests. Just make sure you take note of any allergies or dietary sensitivities and share them with your visitors so that they know what to avoid bringing!
Step 5: Get the Most Out of Your Budget
If you’ve followed the tips in this blog, there’s a good chance that you actually have some money left to spare in your party budget! What this means is that you can now invest the remainder of your cash into some things that give your party an extra boost of fun.
One of the easiest – and most affordable ways – to add a spark to your event and make memories with friends is by playing some party games. If you’re looking for a way to spice up your celebrations this year, we’ve got the thing for you! AUXGOD is 2022’s hottest music party game that combines improv, trivia, and karaoke into the hottest party game of the season.
Teams of party guests face off to pick the best songs and decide who has the best playlist! If you want to make some epic new memories with friends and family at your next celebration, there’s no better way than with the AUXGOD music card game. Whether you’re a Hip Hop & RnB addict or Country Music superfan, AUXGOD is the party game for you! Click here to visit our shop and get started with AUXGOD now!
