There are many popular books and programs discussing how to pick-up women by presenting yourself in an attractive way. Many of the schools of thought today advocate conveying that you are a man of high value and that you are not all that impressed with her beauty. Some schools of thought have concepts like giving a “negative compliment” or “demonstrating high value” to kick start different stages of the attraction process.
And while all of these ideas have their power and place, we are shooting for something different. We are aiming at actually creating real social value and making you a rare, valuable person. Over the course of time, as you throw more and more parties, you really will be that valuable person to a large social circle. Instead of creating the veneer of value and attractiveness, why not actually BE that person by building real social equity?
Parties are the avenue we will be exploring in this post to build social equity. That does not mean that parties are the only way, but hosting parties is a great way to illustrate the idea of building social equity because:
- Parties give you an opportunity to showcase yourself without any particular talent.
- Parties are on your terms.
- Parties put you in the leader position and naturally let
you be the rock star.
- Parties are a way where you can create your own social
position, your own rules and your own value.
- Parties make you a host, which makes you attractive in
many different ways (which we’ll get into later).
- Parties give people value.
Later in the post, I will talk about how to maximize your effectiveness at parties that you are not hosting. Why do I choose to wait until much later in the book to discuss this?
Well, first, I want you to have an appreciation for everything it is to be a party host. Hosting a party is loaded with benefits and responsibilities. When you really recognize what it is to host a party, it will change your perspective on the party scene in general. Hosts, who may or may not necessarily know you yet, will feel more at ease with having you at their parties because they will feel your understanding and respect. You will also have an understanding of all these things that are working in favor of the people throwing the parties. With this knowledge, you’ll see how valuable it is to align yourself with the hosts of other parties to maximize your choices and effectiveness.
Throwing a good party is all about prep work. It is the most time consuming and demanding part, but your efforts will pay off ten-fold once you get into the groove of throwing parties. With every party you throw, the setup will get easier and faster.
So in the first part of this book, we will be talking about very basic logistics. Basic, but of crucial importance. Our initial intent will be to find a place suitable for throwing excellent parties.
For example, if you live in a studio apartment surrounded by crazy old women who hate you, you might want to consider another venue for the party. On the other hand, if you have a buddy who has a house on a hill and virtually no neighbors near the house, you’ve got yourself a good bet.
We’re going to cover choosing the venue and what is worth taking into consideration.
And then there’s the question of how you’re going to fill your party with the women you want. How are you going to fill your party with hot girls if you don’t know any of these hot girls? Where are these women going to come from?
Getting the women to come to the party is the most important part – it’s why you bought this book! So I will go into great depth as to how you will get hot women to come to your party. It’s actually quite simple, but most guys don’t do it! I will show you all sorts of clever ways to get hot women to come and keep coming back.
So great, you have a party with hot women. But there are things you absolutely must make sure you do to ensure that you actually get to enjoy your own party. I have made the mistake of not doing some specific things when throwing my parties and it resulted in all of my guests having a great time while I was running around working the entire evening. Bad situation – I am going to show you how to have a great time at your own party and have everyone gladly do the “grunt work”.
And then there’s the matter of getting laid. My favorite part! Hosting a party is great, but you want to make sure that as the host you get first pick of all of the hot women that show up. In fact, I am going to show you how to be a host that can sleep with all of his female guests and have them loving you! Threesomes, fuck buddies, orgies… all possible once you follow the advice laid out in this book.
There are certainly bonuses too. I mean, after throwing a couple of great parties, you’ll have a whole new social circle available to you. Guys will love you for the value you’re offering them. Women will look at you like a rock star and brag about their hook-ups with you!
This is the reality that we are going to create. Let’s begin.
Choosing Your Party Location
Before you can have the party, you will need to choose the location where you will host it.
We want to make some considerations at the beginning as to where to throw the party, as this will determine the limitations and freedoms you and your guests will have at the party.
Good Relationships with the Neighbors
This is really important, so I listed it first. You absolutely want to make sure that you choose a location that is on good terms with the neighbors. If you do not know the neighbors, the best thing you can do as introduce yourself and politely let them know that you will be having people over. Be really respectful, charming and polite. Let them know that you will have everything under control and you wanted to make sure they knew you had them in mind as well. Tell them that if there is any disturbance at all, they can call you and you will immediately take care of it.
If you make this connection ahead of time, the neighbors will think you are nice and respectful and probably will just ignore the party. Worst case scenario, they may call you to ask you to calm it down, but that is not a bad scenario. Much better than them calling the cops because they don’t know you and therefore think you are a disrespectful punk.
If the neighbors are your age and seem like good people, give them an invite. Chances are they will throw a party in the future and they will welcome you to it. Nice bonus.
Choose a House with Large Open Spaces
People will congregate around wherever the alcohol is. If it’s in the kitchen, people will hang around there. If it’s in the basement, people will be down there. You want to pick a house with a large open space where people hang around after they have their drink, since they won’t go far from where the liquor is, generally speaking.
If you have a house with a yard and the weather permits, you could even throw a party outside. Not every part of the country is warm enough to do this, though, and rain is certainly a risk. However, a party outside is better than no party at all, definitely.
Choose a Place with Minimal Breakable Items
When throwing a party, things have a much higher tendency to get broken. Therefore, if you have a house with high- priced electronics or expensive decor, you will need to move these items somewhere else or you run a risk of them being destroyed. Moving these items takes time and effort, so you’re best off choosing a place that doesn’t have a ton of expensive, breakable stuff.
Since it’s going to be dark in whatever venue you throw the party in, you really don’t have to be too concerned with how fancy the place is. There are a ton of parties packed with college students thrown in dingy basements all the time – as long as you have a bunch of space and alcohol, you meet the requirements.
Choose a Place That is Accessible
Listen, people want to come to your party, get absolutely “blitzed” and then be able to make it home. As the host, you want to do your best to accommodate this desire.
Don’t throw your party out in the middle of nowhere unless you have a group of really committed friends who plan on spending the night. For our purposes, you want to throw the party in a place that is extremely accessible – by car, by taxi, by public transportation, etc. Make it easy for people to get there and back to where they live.
Making Connections For an Incredible Party
This portion of setting up your parties will take time to create and manage, but as with anything, it will be worth it.
This chapter will give you an overview of how to get the people you desire to come to your party.
At first, our strategy will be to make as many connections as possible, as quickly as possible. Later, in Chapter 10, I will discuss trimming your guest list down to only the best people.
Methods of Building a Guest List
Primary Method: Social Networking via Internet
In the old days, before social networking came onto the Internet scene, people learned about parties by their reputation through friends. People were more group-centric and tended not to venture that far outside of their cliques. The only way that someone would check out a random party would be if their friends gave them a high recommendation or if a party just had a great reputation. These days we can bypass creating a reputation and instead create the appearance of a great reputation out of thin air!
Most people these days belong to at least Facebook and/or Myspace. If you do not have an account on either of these sites, you MUST get on them. You must! There are tons and tons of very attractive young women who secretly use Myspace and Facebook to discretely meet and hook up with men, but would never bring themselves to formally join an “online dating service”.
Building a Guest List from Scratch.
Facebook is the best way and can be used to organize an event and create a guest list.
Our first objective is to create a pool of potential guests to your party. The best way to do this is by adding a massive amount of girls in your area to your friends list. Just search on Facebook in your area and add as many as you can.
Remember these are complete strangers, but most of these people are dying to meet new people. This is especially true if you live near a college or if you are in college.
Add 25 girls a day to you profile. Remember that many of these girls won’t come, so you need to add tons in this beginning stage. After adding a ton of girls, you are bound to start adding their friends, so they will think that you already know them or have some affiliation with their social circle at least. Once you create your party event and guest list, the girls will see the list and assume that you know all the girls already and think, “This guy is probably cool, he seems to know my friends… maybe I met him at some point,” and she will be much more likely to come to your party.
When adding new people, I have found that about 1 out of every 100 girls will message me asking if they know me. You can either ignore them or tell them that you think you met her at some place. Bottom line, at this stage you are in it for the numbers, so it really doesn’t matter.
Continue to build your online social network every day for at least a month (and afterward, whenever you feel like it).
The more girls you have, the better.
Meeting Women Everywhere and Inviting Them
Once you’ve made up your mind that you’re going to have a party, you might as well invite every hot girl you can meet in your day-to-day life to the party. The worst that could happen is the girl says “no” and you never see her again.
Before I really had momentum behind this whole party lifestyle, I would establish the Facebook event first and wait to see that a good number of people confirmed. After it was definite that I would be having the party, I would start chatting with hot women and inviting them to my party.
These days, I know that if I say a party will happen on a certain date, everyone will show up. Even if it’s raining, snowing, really hot, really cold, etc. In time, you will have that sort of loyalty with your guests and they will show up no matter what the conditions are for your parties.
For that reason, I will typically start inviting hot girls I meet within one week of when I think the party is happening. I will just strike up a friendly conversation with the woman and then at a high point in the conversation (like when she’s laughing at something I said or expressing interest in something about me), I will just throw out something like, “You know what? You should come to my party next Saturday.” Then I’ll drop the subject until the end of the conversation or until she picks it up and starts asking about it. It’s an easy transition into exchanging information at that point and you can let your party do all the gaming for you.
Women Travel in Packs
Don’t be afraid to invite her and her friends to your party. Women do not travel alone, they travel with their group – safety is essential to women when they’re going out, especially to meet a man or men they do not yet know well. Generally speaking, hot women will bring good people to your party.
Inviting Women to Parties as a Method
Now inviting women to my parties isn’t my only way of meeting women or getting their numbers. I am just highlighting that this is a viable way to meet women with a totally friendly, cool vibe and get their number without having to “game” them or do a bunch of tricks and tactics.
Take note that meeting women through inviting them through parties is quite effective and some guys use this method as their exclusive way to meet and seduce women. Quite successfully, I might add.
In future chapters, we will get into how hosting your own party can be used to your massive advantage in getting women to want you.
The Invitation: Getting Hot Women to Come to Your Party
Now that you have a whole list of women you find attractive, it’s time to pitch your offer: the invitation.
In this section, I want to talk to you about different elements that come into play when creating an invitation. The manner in which you invite the people will determine the results you get.
Again, you need to have a profile that puts you in the best possible light. You don’t need to be conventionally attractive, but you do have to appear fun and social.
People who don’t know you are going to see your invitation and think, “Party… I like parties… who’s this guy?” Then they’ll click your profile and as long as your profile puts you in a good light, most of them will come.
You might say, “Really? That easy?” Yes, it is. Most people are bored with their routine and are dying to try something new and meet new people. Multiply that by the feeling that this is a BIG party that EVERYONE is going to and they’ll feel like losers if they don’t go.
Part I: Enticing People to Come to Your Party
There’s a right way to go about inviting people and a wrong way. In terms of an invitation, we want to take some logistical points into consideration as well as some presentation points. Sure, this may seem a little bit like overkill in terms of preparation work, but this book is about maximizing your effectiveness. And speaking to you from the voice of experience, you definitely do not want to half- ass your invitations or you’re in for a pretty sad party.
Considerations for Getting Maximum Guests
Timing
Timing of the event is important. If you want a large party, hold them on the weekends. Obvious enough. My experience has been that people will be more apt to come to a party on Saturdays than on Fridays. After a long work week or week of studying at school, it’s much harder to get people out on Fridays. Plus, people generally make plans for their Fridays in advance and have open Saturday nights.
On invitations, I start my parties at 10:30 PM and expect that the guests will actually start pouring in around 11:15 PM. My experience has been that the majority of your guests will show up 45 to 60 minutes after the official “start time” for your party, so keep that in mind.
Advance Notice
Let people know several days before you throw your party. If you want to secure their Saturday night, you need to send out invites that Monday. My experience is that Monday is the best day to announce the party since announcing it any earlier runs the risk of the guests forgetting about your party (they’re not thinking about the next weekend yet) and announcing it later runs the risk of your guests already having plans.
How to Predict How Many Will Show Up
The next part is really about getting people to the event. A good way to gauge the amount of people that will show up is to figure half the guests that have confirmed and half of the guests that have responded with a “maybe” will actually show up. I have used this formula countless times when throwing a party and it has been pretty accurate every time.
Themes
Themes are a great way to get girls to come to your party. Here are some reasons why themes are great:
- Themes get people talking. They make your party different from “just another party”.
- Themes give girls an excuse to dress slutty, which they secretly love to do.
- Themes invest people in your party. It takes planning to come to a theme party and planning equals investment, which equals commitment.
In Chapter 6, I go into great detail about different themes you can use to your advantage in your party.
Part II: Presenting the Invitation Itself
Creating an Irresistible Image
Every party must have a good image. The name of the game is excitement: You want people to be excited about your party.
When creating an event invitation on Facebook, for example, you will do things such as use pictures of hot women partying or participating in the theme of your party, then include enticing descriptions and good directions. The key will be that your party will look so novel and enticing that even women you don’t know will show up just to check it out. After all, from the perception you’ll create, they’ll think you’re the most popular guy in town!
Plus, you’ll get a really good idea of how successful your party will be before you even throw it. I would suggest doing a test run to gauge everything with a public event, where your focus is simply getting a ton of people over and then moving on to trimming the fat and perfecting your clientele (we will discuss this later).
Pictures
Pictures are key. If you are going for a particular theme, I suggest adding pictures within that theme to your Facebook event as a way to build your party’s image and encourage people to come. This will give them the idea that you have done this before and it’s going to kick ass.
For example, if you were throwing a “Pimps and Ho’s” party, you would want to find pictures of guys dressed as “pimps” and girls dressed really provocatively.
Where to Find Pictures
To find these pictures, I suggest searching Google images and downloading good images to a folder on your desktop.
To do this search, click on the “Images” section along on the top menu at Google.com and type in a phrase like “hot girls party” or “party” and run the search. If you are searching for a certain party theme, include this in your search, such as “pimps and hos party”.
Other great sites to search for images are: flickr.com, photobucket.com and random people’s Myspace and Facebook profiles.
Once you’ve collected about ten to fifteen images, choose five of the best ones and upload them to your event.
Types of Images to Use
The best kinds of images show hot women, but do NOT look professional. You want it to look like the type of picture you’d see on someone’s Myspace or Facebook profile. You want it to look as if you snapped this photo at one of your own parties.
Remember, hot girls want to go to parties that they see hot girls going to. Guys want to go to parties they see hot girls going to. But nobody wants to go to a party where they just see a bunch of guys. Avoid sausage-fest imagery and make your images “girl-centric”.
Another type of great image to use is from popular culture, such as movies or celebrities. For example, using images from the movie “Old School” or “Animal House” would be a nice touch to throw in. One or two pop-culture pictures maximum.
Descriptions
A solid description is another great way to get people excited. Your tone should be like the “life of the party”: carefree, fun-loving and exciting. You can and should boldly claim that this is the best party out there.
Make sure you tell everyone the amount you are charging and that you will be providing “a ton” of alcohol. Be specific about having enough beer and having plenty of liquor/jungle juice for girls. In future events, I would even go so far as to tell the guys that if they show up as a big group of drunken guys, they will not be let it.
If you are running a door staff (see Chapter 7), you should include this in the invitation. It will make the girls feel more safe and apt to come.
Directions
This is key: Facebook can be set up with a link to Google Maps for easy access, so people can see the directions to your party easily.
I just enter my address into Google Maps (http://maps.google.com) and once it comes up, there’s a button in the upper right corner of the map labeled “Link”. You simply copy the contents of that link into your party description and your potential guests will be able to click the link and see exactly where your party is on the map.
Also, I highly encourage you add your phone number so that people can contact you if they get lost.
Getting Your Guests to Invest
Remember earlier how I said themes are good because it requires your guests to plan and invest energy towards your party? Well this is a great principle in general! If your guests feel like they’ve put some kind of effort or energy into planning to be at your party, it is much less likely that they will blow it off since they wouldn’t want their investment
(be it a costume, a present, a contribution, etc.) to go to waste.
Tip: In the back of your mind, think of ways to get guests to invest in your party so they feel the party is a reward for their efforts, not just another option.
Logistics: Planning the Party Itself
This part of the book is going to focus on the logistics of executing the party itself. Listen, I want to really make something clear: Logistics are EVERYTHING in executing a great party.
I know that talking about logistics is nowhere near as exciting as talking about picking up women, but this is really a very valuable section. Why? It’s valuable because bad logistics can flush a lot of good work down the drain. Seriously – you can have a great guest list, great response rate and even a great turn-out and have it all vanish within a moment’s notice by poorly executing the party logistics.
So heed these words well and you’ll never have to worry about your party being a bust.
Part I: Alcohol
Having enough alcohol for the party is a must. I have seen countless parties evaporate within a couple minutes the moment that the alcohol is gone. I am not kidding – one minute the house is packed, two minutes later it is empty. It has happened that fast.
Fortunately, I learned the lesson early on to stock up heavily on alcohol when it comes to throwing parties. It is far better to have too much liquor and beer than to have too little.
Now while you want to have a lot of liquor and beer, you don’t want to spend too much money on it. I charge $5 at the door. I hate having to do it, but it allows me to afford the alcohol and pay whoever is watching the door and bouncing (which we’ll talk about later).
Let’s talk about some things to do and things to avoid doing when it comes to purchasing liquor for the party.
Jungle Juice: Definitely have “jungle juice” or punch at your party. Some girls refuse to drink beer, so it’s a huge plus to have something that they’ll actually enjoy. Which brings me to my next note…
Fill up the jungle juice gradually throughout the night: Introduce your hard liquor gradually. When it comes to punch, I learned that it is a much better idea to mix up batches of jungle juice throughout the night instead of making one huge batch at the beginning.
This is because people will practically attack the jungle juice at the beginning no matter how drunk they already are. Jungle juice gets drained very quickly. For that reason, it is much better to make a batch at the beginning and then mix up another batch an hour later, then another batch an hour later.
This gives people a chance to drink gradually rather than binge on hard liquor. That means less of a chance that people will make themselves sick by drinking too much, too fast. And since jungle juice is more expensive than beer, it will ensure that the people are drinking the beer throughout the night, instead of hitting the punch hard in the beginning, draining it and then moving on to beer.
Plus, for the girls that absolutely refuse to drink beer (snotty, I know), it will keep them from leaving if they know that more jungle juice will be mixed up, soon as you get to it. I have used the promise of “making more jungle juice soon” to stretch out the party much longer and keep all the guests.
Tip: As a general rule, guests are more likely to stay when they believe that something great is going to happen in the near future. Nobody wants to miss out. Think of ways that you can use that principle to keep guests staying longer at your parties.
Place your alcohol wisely: Pay attention to where you are putting your liquor / beer / kegs / coolers, etc. Remember, people will generally congregate near the alcohol. It’s just something that people do. So make sure you put the alcohol near where you want people to be.
And make sure the alcohol is accessible – people will drink what is most accessible and visible to them. I remember one party where I had a vat of jungle juice in the entry room and the keg in the back. Everyone ravished the jungle juice and within 5 minutes a half-cooler full of jungle juice was drained completely. Not even the die-hard beer drinkers hit the kegs since the jungle juice was the first thing they saw. Nowadays I put the cooler of juice on one side of the room and the keg on the other. This arrangement works out much better; beer-drinkers go to the keg, non-beer-drinkers hit the juice.
Always have more than enough alcohol: Overstock your alcohol. I’ll go into my guidelines for how much liquor and beer to stock later in this section.
Remember that alcohol is the ultimate excuse for people:
There’s a truth about people: People are always looking for excuses and justifications to act how they really want to act and do what they really want to do. I call this excuse theory and I visit this idea throughout the book.
Because alcohol is seen as the ultimate excuse, people equate the presence of alcohol with the presence of fun and freedom. As long as there is alcohol in the vicinity, there is a possibility that someone will do something worth seeing, talking about, experiencing, etc. But beyond that, as long as there is alcohol, there is the possibility that the guests themselves can act how they want and blame alcohol for it.
This is essential: If you run out of alcohol, everyone will leave your party. I’m telling you – if you run out, your guests will run out of your house. It doesn’t matter if every single one of your guests is drunker than they’ve ever been. If your party goes dry, people will think it’s “all downhill from this point” and they will leave immediately. It’s funny, but when it comes to parties, people really do have a herd mentality.
So no matter what, you have to make sure that you have more than enough liquor. I always have a backup supply of liquor and beer just in case I run out. People need to know that there’s more liquor and beer because in their minds it means that there is still more fun to have.
Guard your keg tap: Make sure you hide your keg tap the moment your keg runs out. Unfortunately, you’ll occasionally have a guest that will steal anything they can if they can get away with it. I didn’t think that a person would steal the keg tap, but it happened. Bye-bye $40 keg tap deposit. So now I always make sure that when the keg runs out, someone grabs the tap and puts it somewhere outside of where the guests have access.
Have your own stash of liquor for your “private party”:
Sometimes you’ll want to isolate a girl or a group of girls to your own space. In this case, you should have your own private stock of good liquor so you can enjoy it with those girls. Really this is just a gimmick – it gives girls the excuse to come up to your room without feeling as though they’re coming up to hook up. Again, girls like excuses since it absolves them from being a slut. After all, they were just joining you because you have good liquor in your room, right?
Avoid cheap vodka: I repeat, avoid cheap vodka. Buy mid- grade vodka – if you have any questions about what’s a decent vodka, ask the people working at the liquor store. Cheap vodka is terrible for a party. Sure, you save $5 on a handle (a 1.75 liter bottle), but you will inevitably have guests puking later on. Nothing kills your chances to score with a girl faster than having one of her friends puking in your bathroom… or worse, her puking on you!
In fact, I would say avoid all types of the cheapest forms of liquor. You can always find good mid-level liquor for only slightly more money.
Avoid mixing hard liquors: Generally speaking, if you mix different liquors in a punch, it is far more likely that your guests will get sick and it is far more likely that it will give everyone a terrible hangover. If you’re making punch with vodka, stick to mainly vodka. If you want to throw in a bottle of Apple and Watermelon Puckers for flavor, it’s not a big deal. What I’m talking about here is to avoid mixing up jungle juice with rum, vodka, tequila and gin, etc. That almost guarantees a barf-fest and it’s just stupid.
I make it a rule for myself to stick to one type of liquor throughout the evening – if I’m drinking rum, I stick to rum. If I’m drinking vodka, I stick to vodka. When I follow this rule, I don’t get a hangover. When I break this rule, I usually do get a hangover and sometimes I even get sick. So speaking from experience, avoid it.
Part II: Buying Liquor and Beer the Smart Way
As I said before, you want to make sure you have more than enough alcohol. And you also want to make sure that you do it in the most economical way possible.
First, let’s talk about keg beer. The advantage of buying a keg is that you get a ton of beer for the cheapest price. The disadvantage is that you have to drink all of that beer that night or it’s going to go bad. So you want to make sure there will be enough people at your party to drink all of the keg beer. I’ve seen cheap kegs of crappy beer available for $40, but I generally aim to spend $50-$55 per keg and get something decent like Bud Light or Coors Light. Remember that there are deposits on kegs ($40 is a standard deposit for a keg barrel) and if you don’t own a keg tap, most places will let you borrow one with a $40 deposit as well.
Then there are beer balls (also known as beer spheres). A beer ball holds roughly 55 cans worth of beer and is generally cheaper than buying that amount of beer in cans. With that said, you do need a beer ball tap and, like the keg, you need to make sure everyone drinks all the beer in it or it will go bad. Still, because it is smaller than a keg, you can save an unopened ball if it’s left over.
Finally, there’s straight up cans of beer. Cans of beer are great because any leftover cans can be saved for the next party. However, buying beer in cans is the most expensive way to go and it’s a pain in the ass to pick up all the empty beer cans at the end of the night.
As far as beer goes, you are going to have to make an estimation of how much beer everyone will drink. Here are the figures I use when it comes to purchasing beer and liquor:
200 guests: 2 kegs, 2 beer balls, 4 30-packs of canned beer and a half-filled full-size cooler of jungle juice (equates to 3 handles of vodka mixed with lots of juice)
150 guests: 1 keg, 4 beer balls, 4 30-packs of canned beer and a half-filled full-size cooler of jungle juice (3 handles of vodka/juice)
100 guests: 1 keg, 2 beer balls, 4 30-packs of canned beer and a half-filled full-size cooler of jungle juice (3 handles of vodka/juice)
50 guests: 2 beer balls, 3 30-packs of canned beer and a half- filled full-size cooler of jungle juice (3 handles of vodka/juice)
Part III: Protecting Your House/The Venue
Once the party is in motion, you don’t want to be distracted by protecting your house and belongings. In this section, we’re going to talk about preparations you should make so that you don’t have to worry during the party.
At the very least, you should make sure you do the following for every party:
Container for cigarette butts: At any party, especially at a party where people are drinking, people are going to smoke cigarettes. And where there are smokers, there will be cigarette butts. It’s best to put out at least one container for people to put their cigarettes in. Not everyone will use it, but if you have a container available to smokers you’ll at least cut down on the amount of cigarette butts you’ll need to pick up later. Just make sure you put a little bit of water in the container to douse the cigarettes.
Lock up your valuables: Whenever you throw a party, it’s important to lock up anything that you don’t want stolen. You can’t keep track of everyone all the time, nor would you want to. Some things to make sure you hide:
o Electronics: MP3 players, Video game systems, laptops, digital cameras, DVDs, cell phones
o Bottles of Alcohol
o Wallets
o Keys
o Money
o Transit Passes
o Jewelry
o Personal documents: credit card statements, cell phone bills, pay stubs, etc.
Cover your surfaces – You can expect that if there’s a flat surface in your house, a drink will end up on it. One particular surface comes to mind for me as I write about this: I lived in an apartment with a Steinway grand piano in it. By the middle of the party, I would guess there were about 50 cups on the thing. My advice is that you cover any surface that is important to you. Punch has a tendency to stain surfaces, so keep that in mind in the area where you have it. It also doesn’t hurt to have some good surface cleaner on hand in case anything does get stained.
Part IV: Setting the Mood – Music and Lights
Now it’s time to set the ambience. It is amazing the effect that lighting and music has on guests at the party. Let’s get right into how to set the mood perfectly for the ideal party situation.
Lighting = Magic
When it comes to lighting, you want it to be dim. When the lighting is dim, people feel less self-conscious. They are more likely to loosen up and have a good time because they feel like they are not “in the spotlight” (literally).
From a psychological standpoint, dim lighting causes people to dilate their pupils. Dilated pupils are a sign of attraction, so it actually causes your guests to feel a higher degree of attraction to the person they are looking at because they unconsciously will pick up this “indicator of interest” and reflect it back.
I highly recommend liberal use of “Christmas lights” to create an excellent dim lighting effect. If you find the appearance of Christmas lights tacky, you can still use them for the lighting effect, but hide them behind something so the actual stream of lights is not seen, but only the glow.
Music: Being an Intelligent DJ
I’ve had people offer to DJ my parties for a fee. I could not think of a bigger waste of money! My MP3 player on shuffle does a fantastic job – why would I pay someone to do what my player does for free?
You can be a fantastic DJ too. Just follow these rules and everyone will love your playlist.
The music you play should be:
- Upbeat. Nothing slow – ever.
- A mix of modern popular songs and old songs.
People love old songs that everyone knows. If it’s a song that people know enough to sing along to, that’s a good song to pick.
- Lowest common denominator. Put on the songs that the most people will know and at least like, not obscure ones that some will hate and some will like.
- Positive, light and fun. Never ever any angry or depressing music.
- Appealing to your audience. Put on the music that your “type” of girl likes – doesn’t mean it’s necessarily what you like, but who cares. Party music is to entertain your guests. I mean, I have heard “Pour Some Sugar on Me” and “Summer of ‘69” enough for one lifetime, but the girls always love it so it’s always in the mix. You can play what you like when you’re one-on-one with her.
Don’t let anyone touch the music. This is just a precaution to make sure nobody steals your MP3 player. I bought a relatively cheap MP3 player to use for parties – I think this reduces chances of people stealing it. Regardless, be mindful of anyone messing with the music since it could be someone attempting to pocket the thing. Make sure your friends know to look out for your player too and you’ll be fine.