How to Host an Epic Harry Potter Party

Y’all. I have a treat for you today. A few months ago, a few friends hosted a Harry Potter party. Unfortunately, I was on my way to Canada for a family vacation at this time, but fortunately enough I was able to pick their brains and ask them questions about all their hard work and how they made it happen.

This type of party is the type of party I aspire to. While I’ve hosted many a party I have not nearly gone this far into planning decorations, vignettes, and themed activities. Maybe it’s something I’ll add to my bucket list for 2018. But enough about me.

Without further ado, please enjoy reading the epic tale of this Harry Potter party.

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Asking the question, why did you decide to throw a Harry Potter party seemed silly, so I changed the question to –

Choosing the Date

When did you decide to host a Harry Potter party? I know the final party was hosted in July.

Erin: We started thinking about the possibility of having a Harry Potter party around in March I believe? Maybe even February. It was initially supposed to be a birthday party for Ariana and it kind of took on a life of its own.

Ariana: It did start as something much smaller earlier this year. I think originally we just intended to have a Harry Potter movie showing party, and of course it developed into something much bigger that required a lot more time to prepare.

Nick: I joined the planning a little later on. When I joined, the plan was a small get together with a few decorations and themed food. I’m not sure exactly how I snuck my way into the planning but I’m grateful I was able to be a part of it. I will say my involvement did not help to simplify the planning though.

How to Begin

There’s so much you can think of when you think “I want to throw a Harry Potter party.” Where do you even begin?

Erin: Well, like I said, it was supposed to be a birthday party initially. We thought we would have a movie night with some theme snacks… and then we wanted decorations. It kind of snowballed until we thought that maybe having an outdoor summer party and taking the time to plan it through would be better. After that, we bought a notebook and started making a lot of lists.

Ariana: We started the whole process one day in the winter. We were sitting by the fire with a green composition book and each of us kept blurting out ideas. Erin would write them down. I have no idea how long we spent doing that, but we barely talked outside of blurting these ideas out and looking through Pinterest and the rest of the internet for ideas. We may have even pulled out a book or two. By the end of that, we had a longer list than we knew what to do with, but that’s where it all began.

Nick: I was not involved in the initial plans. I jumped into the planning at some point in February or March. When I joined in Ariana and Erin had the essential ideas, like food, almost completely formed. They also had many lists of other ideas they thought would be fun to add, so I looked over the lists and tried to help figure out ways to make those ideas workable. Then there were the ideas that they had simple things planned that I made much more complicated, for example the wands.

Using Pottermore

I’m assuming you used Pottermore to split people into Houses? How did you carry this information throughout the party?

We required everyone to sort themselves on Pottermore before they came to the party (if they hadn’t already) and wrote down their results in the party planning notebook to get a total amount for each house. Then we made house ties for everyone out of felt (there’s a picture of them somewhere) that we gave them when they arrived at the party. The houses are such a big part of the series that we knew we needed to include them in a big way. So, we had house points that could be earned (and lost) during the party for different things (though I admit the rules were a little arbitrary). It got really fun since there was a host for each house and we all kind of competed against each other to be the winner at the end of the party. Plus, having friends from different friend groups in the same houses helped them connect to each other and really brought the party together.

How Houses Earned Points

What were some of the things for which houses could get points?

House points were something we might need to plan a bit better for next time. We knew there were some things that would definitely earn house points – solving the potion puzzle, placing in the horcrux scavenger hunt, and winning tournament quidditch cup games. But aside from that it was as arbitrary as it sometimes seemed in the series. We occasionally threw points at people for “good behavior” (like putting on the felt ties we made for everyone, which were initially forgotten in a corner) and took them away for “bad behavior” (spilling drinks, knocking things over). It was kind of a fun back and forth with the heads of house to a point.

Harry Potter Houses

What Harry Potter Houses are each of you? Do they fit your personalities?

Erin: It actually worked out really nicely that we had a “Head of House” for each of the four houses helping with the party. I’m a Gryffindor, which I had a hard time understanding initially, but I’ve started to embrace. I think other people understand my Pottermore results better than I do some days.

Ariana: I was sorted in to Ravenclaw. At first I wasn’t so sure that I really belonged in that house, but I quickly changed my mind. Between my very quirky and eccentric nature and my overly serious desire to someday have vast stores of useless information at the ready, I realized that I would fit right in with the blue and bronze.

Erin:  For Slytherin we have my sister, Kerry. She fully embraces her Slytherin-ness, and I think we’d all agree that the cunning and ambition that are associated with the house fit her personality (and some of the mischief associated with the house as well). She stepped up and took the tasks that we needed delegated out, doing them when she had time.

Nick: I am a Hufflepuff and although I was surprised by that at first, I have grown to realize it is 100% true. It’s very rare that I can take any online sorting quiz and not turn out to be in Hufflepuff. It’s funny looking back at certain things I have done in my life (or things people tell me I have done that I don’t exactly remember) and realizing how well it fits in with the defining traits of Hufflepuff.

Party Invitations

Tell me more about your invitations.

The invitations may be something that we make a little more fun the next time we do this. We were so focused on all of the other elements that the invitation process really just consisted of a Facebook event and text messages. I did use the Hogwarts letter format in the event though, just to prepare everyone for how ridiculous this whole thing was going to be:

Creating Scenes from Harry Potter

You brought so many scenes from the books to real life around the house. What were the top vignettes for each of you and how did you put them together?

Potions Class

We used potions class as a means of displaying and serving all beverages (except for the Butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks) to our party-goers. We found an old cabinet at Goodwill that we turned into our Potions cabinet. There we placed several vials of wizarding ingredients such as belladonna, bezoars, bubotuber pus, venomonous tentacula leaves, etc. Around the cabinet we set up our bar. We labeled all beverages with wizarding names (eg. Vodka was “Doxy Venom,” Rum was “Mermaid tears,” iced tea was “Lobalug venom”). We also had a Potions recipe book (each page labeled 394, of course) for different drink recipes. For example a Jack and coke would be:

Draught of Living Death
(Causes drinker to fall into a deep sleep)

• 2 oz Armadillo Bile

• Fill to brim with Lacewing Fly Juice

We had a wizard to muggle conversion chart at the beginning of the textbook.

Ollivander’s Wand Shop

The vignette that we put the most time and effort into was Ollivander’s Wand Shop. The initial idea was a popular Pinterest idea of using hot glue, chop stick, and acrylic paint. It then turned into making unique handcrafted wands for each guest using a pedestal grinder, files, dremmels, and wood stain. We also created a box for each wand (four days before the party, just for some added panic), and handwrote individual and unique wand permits for each wand.  As guests arrived, they were directed to Ollivander’s where our co-host, Nick provided the wand-choosing-the-wizard experience.

(In case you’re wondering what this looked like, I did some FB stalking and put together this collage for y’all. Seriously impressive work, friends. -Chrystina)

Hogwarts Acceptance Letters

This is one of the things that I expected to be catastrophic and actually came out better than anticipated. I tea-stained, addressed, and wax-sealed envelopes for each guest which were suspended over the fireplace with fishing line, command hooks, and paperclips to mimic the scene from the first book. As each guest departed, they were able to find their name on a letter and take it home with them as another party souvenir. We wanted to be sure that they could take their letters with minimal difficulty, so I twisted paperclips onto the fishing line and then slid the letters onto the paperclips. The paperclips were discrete enough that, even once the letters started being removed, it didn’t interfere with the floating illusion. The real exciting part about the letters was the aesthetic of each guest’s name was written in the iconic green ink, with Harry Potter’s Privet Drive address, and sealed with a wax Hogwarts seal. But, we did include small a mock Hogwarts letter that was printed on card stock inside, in case anyone decided to open theirs.

Great Hall

The candles! Trying to re-create the grandeur of the Great Hall was a feat we were little prepared for. We strung candles from the ceiling attached to ribbons of each house color. We created a feast along the dining room table where each food item had its own wizarding name. We did our best to make this an awe-inspiring sight whether close-up or far away.

Honeydukes

Honeydukes was set off to the side of the Great Hall, and was full of wizarding sweets. Designating it as Honeydukes was a large hand-painted replication of the store’s sign which we surrounded with treats from the wizarding world including chocolate frogs, Hagrid’s rock cakes, treacle tarts, pretzel wands, and deathly hallow shortbread. There were also chocolate frogs set off to the side of Honeydukes individually packaged in handmade boxes (including a Wizard card) for each guest to take home.

Potions Riddle

We took the exact wording of the original potions riddle and displayed it on a GIANT tea stained piece of parchment. We displayed potions bottles as a visual to help decode the riddle and gave the opportunity for each guest to solve and submit their answers for House Points.

The Menu

What special preparation went into the menu?

 Well, it was a lot of brainstorming about what they actually ate in the books because we wanted it to be accurate. Probably the biggest thing we did was several rounds of Butterbeer taste testing. We tried several different recipes before we found our favorite one. It ended up being the cream from this recipe from Design Dazzle and the basic idea of their recipe for the butter beer, but with the addition of copious amounts of butterscotch syrup into the soda (an idea we got from this frozen recipe from I Heart Naptime. We LOVED this recipe, too, but decided that the frozen wasn’t as practical to mass produce at the party).

We bought the Harry Potter cookbook so we would have “accurate” recreations of foods from the books/movies. Our favorite that we got from the book was Hagrid’s Rock Cakes for sure. They ended up being these delicious cinnamon sugar scones. The treacle tarts from the book were a must as well, since they are Harry Potter’s favorite dessert.

Adding Bang for Your Buck

What are some small things you did that really added some bang for your buck?

 We did hand make a lot of everything so that we didn’t spend money on “authentic” replicas.

I don’t think anything we did could be considered a “small” undertaking. We had so much fun putting everything together that you might say we went overboard on a lot of it.

One thing that was an inexpensive detail that people really reacted to was the trail of spiders. We made a trail of plastic spiders coming from the second floor bathroom to mimic the fleeing spiders in The Chamber of Secrets which was creepy and also gave us an easy, theme appropriate way of directing people to the upstairs bathroom: “Just follow the spiders.” We were a little too proud of the fact that that’s a Hagrid quote and that it was actually “the girls bathroom on the second floor” that they lead to.

The Decor

How much of your decor was handmade and how much of it was store bought? Where did you find was a great place for buying supplies?

 Just about all of the décor was handmade with the exception of the house banners and things we printed at Staples. I think the stores we visited most often were Goodwill and the craft stores.

The Activities

What activities did you do during the party?

We had a few games for our guests to take part in throughout the evening and they are listed below:

Horcrux Scavenger Hunt

We hid the seven horcruxes throughout the house and the yard for people to find, and House Points were awarded based on how quickly all seven were found. We asked everyone to take a selfie with the horcuxes as proof of finding them, which added a fun element to it.

Potions Riddle

We had the potions riddle from the first book displayed so that everyone could try their hand at solving it. Each person to get it right was awarded House Points.

Voldemort Piñata

We had a friend create a Voldemort piñata.

Guess How Many Every Flavor Beans

No House Points were awarded, but the winner was able to keep the jar of jelly beans.

Quidditch Pong

This was supposed to turn into a tournament, but devolved. We had so much going on that we did not actually turn this into a competition, but a few people did get the opportunity to play. It was essentially beer pong, but with 3 quidditch hoops in the center. There are a lot of rule variations, but we decided that throwing the ball through the hoop granted it safe passage across the table (and hopefully into a cup) while throwing over/around the hoops allowed for the other team to swat it away from their cups. It was WAY more challenging that initially anticipated, but it was a lot of fun.

Goblet of Fire Shots

We created a flaming shot to begin the Quidditch Tournament (this may have contributed to the downfall of the tournament structure). Fun fact: throwing cinnamon on fire will cause a magical sparkle effect.

The Challenges

What was each of your biggest challenges in putting all of this together?

Erin: I think we could probably all agree that the biggest challenge was narrowing down the ideas to realistically fit in our time span. There are just so many things from the books and movies that are iconic to the series that we couldn’t possibly include all of it.

Ariana: I absolutely loved the whole process of putting this party together. I do have a different schedule than the others involved in the party, so trying to be a part of all of the creative aspects was a little bit difficult for me. We just had so much we wanted to see at this party that we did have to delegate different projects through the week and then bring them together later on.

Erin: Some of what Ariana is talking about is what we were jokingly referring to as “homework” in between big planning /crafting sessions with me, Ariana, and Nick. We would decide on a task for one of us to do by the time we met again. We got Kerry and my friend Caitlin in on it too, though. Kerry got the task of photo booth props (designing, printing, assembling) while Caitlin made us a Voldemort piñata and these really awesome potion bottle shelf inserts to decorate the kitchen. Other times, we’d have other friends come to the group sessions and help out a bit. Nick’s sister, Stacey spent some time helping us with signs, and our friends Kyle and Loren helped out making a couple of wands. It was hard to give away tasks because we were all a bit control freak-ish about the details, but we knew that we had to let some people we could trust help to get everything done in time.

Lessons Learned

What would you do differently next time?

Funnily enough, we joked a lot after the party about how surprised we were that everything came together the way we envisioned it and without any real setbacks. We did find that we were rushing at the very end more than we wanted to though. So, next time we would either need to delegate more of the decoration set up or give ourselves more lead time on cooking.

Favorite Parts

What was each of your favorite parts of the party?

Erin:  I think my favorite part of the whole thing was that we got to bring all of these people together in an environment that was just fun and we got to see them enjoying themselves no matter their level of fandom. Everyone really appreciated all of the work that went into it. It’s not often you get to go to a party anymore and act like a kid (and have it be socially acceptable).

Ariana: Being able to see this incredibly over the top plan come to fruition was amazing. Towards the end of the party, I did a walk-through of everything we had put together and I loved every bit of it. Seeing the books come to life in the way we imagined was rewarding. I think it was the preparation of the party and allowing ourselves to be as creative as we wanted to be that was my favorite part of the process. As far as during the actual party, I think seeing a group of people walking around with wands and enjoying all the surprises we had for them was the best part.

Nick: My favorite part had to be the planning. It was a lot of fun just sitting down with Ariana and Erin just talking Harry Potter and planning all of the little details, as well as the more intricate decorations and ideas. During the party I really enjoyed that everyone embraced and enjoyed it for what is was. Everyone came dressed in there house colors, wore their ties, and kept their wands on them all night. Harry potter is such a big part of my life that it was really great to see all of our closest friends, even those that are not as big of fans of the series as the three of us are, genuinely enjoy themselves and appreciate the details we worked hard on.

The Logistics

Let’s talk about logistics. How many hours of work would you say went into the party, and what was your overall party budget?

We spent quite literally every free hour we had for two months working on this party – planning, crafting, assembling, and cooking. When we could, it was in group sessions at someone’s house, and other times it was cutting out and assembling chocolate frog boxes while watching Netflix in bed. Other than going to work (and sometimes sleep), we didn’t do much else. Budget wise, we kind of blindfolded ourselves and refused to acknowledge how much we were spending. This party wasn’t something we wanted to do half-way and we knew the numbers would terrify us if we let them. So we found bargains, hand-made, upcycled (from Goodwill especially), and used coupons whenever we could, but essentially accepted our fate. I could ballpark a total if I tried hard enough, but I’d honestly rather remain blissfully unaware.

The Books

And now, I’ve got to ask, how many times have each of you read Harry Potter? Which was your favorite book?

Erin: I have to admit that I have not actually read the series the entire way through, which makes it really confusing that I co-hosted a Harry Potter party. I started reading them when I was younger, but I had to compete with my sister for the books and eventually gave up. I started rereading from the beginning around the time we started planning the party, though, and I’m making my way to the end this time. I have seen all of the movies a zillion times, and for both the movies and the books, my favorite is The Prisoner of Azkaban.

Ariana: I’m not entirely sure that it’s possible for me to put a number on that at this point. I completely immersed myself in Rowling’s wizarding world as a child and I think that it is because of those books that I fell in love with reading. I have also listened to the audiobooks read by Jim Dale too many times to count (you can’t help but love his voice). If I had to pick one book, I would have to say that it’s The Half Blood Prince.

Nick: I would also have a hard time counting how many times I read the series as a kid. Harry Potter was the only thing I would read as a kid by choice. It has been a lot harder for me to find the time to read them the past few years so this year I started listening to the audiobooks after Ariana suggested it. I highly recommend doing that. For how many times I have read the series, listening to it made it seem like I was reading it for the first time again. As far as my favorite book, it is very tough for me to choose. I really enjoy the Prisoner of Azkaban and the Order of the Phoenix. Both of those books give a lot more insight into Harry’s past as well as wider wizarding world.

Other Party Photos

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to cover everything in this interview, but here are a few more photos from the party that might inspire you!

What a party, huh? Are you not completely and totally impressed? I’m baffled. And amazed. I put together a collage of some of the moments they didn’t tell you about during the interview that looked incredibly awesome. (And some of them even really simple!) If you are thinking about hosting your own party, also consider:

• House points jars and tokens

• Magical potions labels

• Class-themed centerpieces

• Plant labels for herbology class

• Decorative class signs

• A Voldemort pinata

• House ties

• Quidditch supplies

• Platform nine-and-three-quarters

• The Three Broomsticks setup

• More decorative signs

• An invisible cloak

• A library restricted section

• Bathroom decor

• Photobooth props

• Boggarts

• Chocolate frogs

• Additional potions

Phew. What a party! So. Many. Ideas. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty inspired. Now I just need to figure out what I like enough to focus on every day for 6 months. I’m sure there’s something. Let the brainstorming begin!