How to Host an Award Show Party

This Sunday, February 25, the stars of the silver screen will be pulling out their best tuxedos and evening gowns for the 79^th annual Academy Awards in Hollywood. You might not be able to walk to red carpet or take home a golden statue, but you can celebrate the night with food, games, and your own awards. Depending on when you read this, you may have very little time to pull this party together. So I'm going to lay out a quick, sure fire way to take advantage of the time you do have. If anything, you can take the tips you learn here and adapt them to any future award shows (The Golden Globes, SAG Awards, etc.), and even get a head start on next year.

Invitations
The quickest way to get people to your house this Sunday is by making some phone calls or e-mails. That's rather self-explanatory. If you go the internet route, try Evite.com. A free service that helps your organize invitations and keep track of who RSVPs. Not only is this great for this kind of event, but any future event you can think of that requires an invitation. If you can manage paper ones, try printing out ones from here or here.

DecorationsIdeas for decorations can be found at the following websites:
Digs Magazine
Plum Party (This stuff costs money, but you can certainly get plenty of ideas.)
That's the Spirit!

Food

The staple to any film related award show is POPCORN! But for some great meal recipe ideas and menus, check out these websites:
Dinner and a Movie
Epicurious.com
Oprah's Hollywood Party

Games
1. One of the easiest and more readily available games would entail you simply printing out Oscar ballots (you can do so here), pass out pens, and have them fill out the sheet prior to the Oscar. As each award is read, have them check if they chose correctly. It's always fun to announce who is in the lead periodically.

2. You can also play a movie quote game using the list of quotes found here. Simply copy and past the list in word, print it, and cut the paper in half to separate the movies from the quotes. Leave the list of quotes out with blank pieces of paper (even better if you make a word document with numbers running along the side equal to the amount of quotes) and try and see which of your guests can put movie titles to each of them. Whoever gets the most right, wins!3. This one is fun, and more interactive. Write the name of famous movie characters on pieces of paper. When your guests start to walk in tape a name to their back not letting them see who it is. To figure out who is on your back, have your guests ask each other yes or no questions regarding the character. This one doesn't really have a winner. It's more fun just to play it.

Prizes
1. One of the more obvious, and albeit pricier options for prizes (if you're willing to spend money) is on any DVDs of the nominated pictures. Another way you can go is to buy DVDs for films that are so terrible that they would never be nominated for Best Picture. If you've noticed the crappy DVDs tend to be the very cheap ones. So make it seem like you're making a tounge-in-cheek jab at the award show and make the prizes crappy DVDs. Hopefully they're the ones that are so bad their good.

2. Some good prizes for the non-winners (nice then losers) are lottery tickets. Not only is it a cheap consilation prize (normally costing only $1), but it's like you're giving them a second chance to actually win at something.3. Other prizes can be easy simple candy. What says "winner" better then a KING size candybar?

If you follow these simple tips you'll certainly be able to take home the gold, and keep your friends coming back in the future.