There is such a small difference between a good party, and an awesome party. Throughout my years in college, I’ve narrowed it down to two major differences. The first difference is the amount of planning that goes into a party. The second difference is the level of structure, during the party. When there is a party, that has had proper planning, and is executed with structure, it transcends the whole idea of what a “college party” is, and introduces a whole new level of excitement and fun. The question that is then posed, how come everyone, who had parties at their house, doesn’t do this? In my years of experience, I believe it comes down to both, the apathy, and laziness of many college students these days.

I’ll explain, in depth, the steps that are involved with executing an extremely profitable party, using last years Halloween party that I facilitated, as an example.

When I first came up with the idea to have an organized, well run party for Halloween 2007, I had a hard time getting permission to execute it, from my fraternity brothers who lived in the house. Understandably, they were apprehensive at having way more people at the house, than has ever been there. What I did to calm their nerves was to type up a formal outline, of exactly what would occur, how, and why.

My first task was to decide the parameters of the party. To satisfy the house owners, I made it a basement only party. By gauging previous parties, I decided that 75-90 people would be the max capacity. From here, I used simple math to decide how much alcohol would be needed to support 90 people. Knowing that there are some people who can drink a lot, and some that can drink just a little, I came down to an average of 5 beers per person. This seems low, but when you take into account the people who come late, and the people who BYOB, it equals out. Here are my calculations.

\/ How many beers do we need \/

5beers / person = 5 X 90 = 450 beers total.

\/ How many 30 racks are required to have 450 beers \/

Total # Beers / 30 (case of 30 beers) = 450 / 30 = 15

\/ Cost of 15 thirty racks of Keystone Light \/

15 X $15.99 = $239.85

\/ Revenue from guests \/

Total # guests X $5 = 90 X $5 = 450

\/ Total amount of returned Cans \/

450 X .05 = $22.50

With these figures, I quickly made an balance sheet, which I included on the proposal.

Income

Revenue from guests - $450.00

Revenue from returned cans - $22.50

Total – $472.50

Expense

Beers - $239.85

Decorations - $25.00

Total - $264.85

Conclusion - +$207.65

After all of these calculations were complete, the hard work was out of the way. I started inviting guests, I used Facebook, but any social networking site will work.

(NOTE: In the invite, do not state the address, and do not state there is alcohol. You can have it say something to the effect of “Halloween Party at the Blue House, Its gunna be bigger than ever!”)

One final phase of planning was to assign who was going to staff the party. This is vital!! I needed to cover 5 positions throughout the entire night. 1 doorman, who would collect money and issue a stamp. 1 Stairman, who would work to keep the party in the basement. 1 floorman, who would walk around and make sure everyone was enjoying theirselves. And finally, 2 Barmen, who were in charge of serving alcohol. The system we used, was that people would get a full can, and when it was empty, the only way to get another was to present the empty can, which we would put in a large plastic bag.

Luckily, we had 4 pledges at the time, who gladly worked the whole night. All together, we had 5 people already scheduled, so I only had to find a few other friends who could take shifts doing the last position.

THAT’S IT

As the pictures below will prove, we had a LOT of people, a WILD time, and HUGE amounts of FUN. But we had all of this in a well-controlled environment.

Looking back at that night, I get many people asking me, “It must have sucked for you to work the whole party huh?” My answer is, “Not at all, I got my satisfaction out of proving to myself, that I could successfully facilitate a function as large as it was, without problems!”

And one other benefit of me working the whole night > I met my current Girlfriend, who is awesome!

-Andrea and I