Graduation Party Planning

Graduation Party

Your teen only graduates from high school once, so you’ll want to host the best graduation party that won’t drive you insane prepping for yet, that will be talked about in the years ahead. It’s time for grad party planning and party ideas that will be fun and exciting for everyone.

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Select The Best Venue

Consider whether you really want to host it at your house. While you can keep an eye on the kids, it can be more work than you think to set everything up, make the food, and clean up afterward. However, it is much cheaper and has a few benefits as well.

It can be held in the basement,
recreation room or in the
backyard

If you don’t want to go to that much effort, you can rent a meeting hall, or hold it in a restaurant that has a private room, park, or other venues.

Invites

People are more likely to attend a graduation party if they receive an invitation in the mail or through social media. You can combine your graduate’s graduation as well as the party invite together to save a little money.

You’ll have to chat with your teen to decide who is invited.

Will it just be you as the host and their friends?

Will all the parents be allowed to attend too?

What about family or relatives?

Invites

Check out more ideas on my Graduation Invite Pinterest Board

Let’s start with Senior pictures. These are taken in the summer before your student becomes a senior. The school contracts with a local photographer that will provide them with all the senior pictures for the yearbook. You may choose to use these if you so desire. The benefit is that they are convenient as you must take your student in for yearbook pictures anyways and they are professionals who usually do a very nice job. If you can afford it, you will probably be looking at $250 upwards for photos through the school’s provided studio.

Photos For Invites

An alternative is to post on Facebook to see if any photography students need practice or local photographers that work out of their homes or on location will run specials often as low as $50 an onsite session. Make sure with this you are purchasing the rights to the photos in which they will hand you a digital copy of your photos when they are done editing them. With these, you will have to convince your student to dress up again and go out for more photos. After you will need to upload your photos to photo-developing places such as Walmart, Sam’s Club, Costco or your local photo department.

Hint: Nowadays our phone cameras can take high-quality photos. To save by not hiring a photographer just take your child to a destination and have fun shooting some pictures to use for their graduation invitations. This invite I did this with my phone and uploaded it to Sam’s Club to order our invites. I don’t think it turned out to bad.

Graduation Announcement I did at Sam’s Club for $17 for 50 invites

Select Delicious Food & Beverages

It’s important to have a good selection of foods, drinks, and desserts for them to enjoy. If you’re hosting the party in a hall, you can hire a caterer to prepare the food. If it will be at a restaurant, you can have a buffet. Have a variety of different things available.

For more ideas on food visit my Food for large groups on Pinterest

Hire a DJ

Musical entertainment is extremely important at a grad party. A DJ knows exactly what music is hot today with teens, and would really set the party afire. Much easier than mom or dad trying to put a playlist together of old music. Make sure you clear enough space for dancing and you will be quite surprised at how affordable DJ’s can be.

Party Decorations

Even though this is going to be a grown-up party, you can still make suitable decorations. There are plenty of party ideas. You can even browse florist catalogs to buy colorful flowers in a “2018” arrangement. Chalkboard decorations are elegant and tasteful too. Or how about a theme? We did a Hawaiian theme with Hawaiian food and hired a fire dancer to teach the Hiku dance

My Volcano for Hawaiian Party

Boys learning Hawaiian graduating to become a man dance

If you’re in the PHX Arizona and want a Hawaiian theme party I highly recommend Tamali’i Polynesian Entertainment

Remember to also keep your teen in the loop about your party ideas. They can provide input on what grad party ideas will work best for their special grad party evening.

What are things you are planning for graduation parties? I would love to hear what tips and tricks and ideas you may have.