Pacing Your Party Throughout the Whole Event- Part 2

We’ve talked about the importance of pacing in planning and preparing for your party. Making a schedule for yourself so you can accomplish all the party preparations in a somewhat leisurely manner is so much better than frantically running around to get everything done.

We will assume here, for the sake of argument and because we like to look on the bright side, that you have planned your party beautifully. The house was cleaned up by 10am, the food has all been purchased, the dessert was made yesterday, as was the main course casserole and now that it is 2:00pm you are putting the finishing touches on your table setting.

You go to the head of the class in terms of scheduling your day well. You have plenty of time to prepare your last minute food items and still take a nap. Bravo!! Well done!! We’re coming to you from now on for tips.

But, there’s another kind of pacing we haven’t talked about and that is pacing during the party. In other words, how much time should you allocate to each part of the evening?

To do this, we will pretend you are having a casual backyard barbecue for 6 people.

Appetizers: Let’s give everyone about an hour to arrive, get drinks and get settled. Have your appetizers and drinks all ready to go. An hour will give your guests plenty of time to get something to eat, drink and visit, but not so much time that they begin to wonder if you’re sending out to another state for the food. During that hour, you can visit with your guests and do any last minute cooking that needs to be done.

Dinner: This depends on several things:
How well is the dinner progressing? Is everyone having fun and conversation flowing? You might not want to disturb the chemistry if everyone is having the time of their lives. If things seem a bit dull, it might be time for an earlier change of scenery.

Do you have other activities planned? Is this party basically a get together over dinner or do you have a program planned? Games, sing-a-long, watching a movie? If there are specific activities planned for after dinner you need to keep in mind how long you want the entire evening to take.

If your guests are the kind that are going to want to leave by 11pm and you are showing a 2 hour DVD, then you’d better not spend too much time on appetizers and dinner. If midnight is the shank of the evening to your merry making friends then, again, factor that into your time schedule. What day of the week is it?

If your party is on a Friday night, your guests might be tired from working all day and so want to end earlier. If it’s Saturday night they get to sleep late the next day so would probably be able to stay up later. If it’s Sunday night, again work rears its ugly head so you might want to plan an earlier evening, either by starting earlier or shortening up each section of the evening.

Dessert: Dessert is often something that you have to play by ear. If you’ve been sitting at the table for ages, you could probably serve dessert and your guests won’t groan about being too full. You can serve it at the table (often easier) or adjourn to another part of the house. If you’re playing a game or watching a movie, you could consider serving dessert either during the activity or when it’s over.

If everyone is exclaiming about how wonderful the food is and how they all ate too much (music to any hostess’s ears), then you probably don’t want to offer dessert until everyone has had a chance to work up at least a little bit of an appetite for it. In that case you could get up from the table, mill around or sit in another spot and visit until you think dessert would be a welcome sight.

Another way to view the evening is to guess at what time your guests will leave and work backwards, thinking about how long each part of the evening will take and set your beginning time accordingly.

And if you’re off… that’s okay. This is an art not an exact science. As long as you and your guests are having fun that’s really all that matters.