# How dare you have your own party!



## HKitten (Sep 20, 2009)

From what I've read here, it sounds like most people are used to being 'the halloween party holder' among their friends. Or must be very organised at not all arranging their parties for the same dates 

One of my best friends kept saying ALL night last year during our party that she wanted to do a party herself the following year. And I could hardly object because I don't have the monopoly on parties.

Then a few months ago she got pregnant and told me she's expecting on November 8th - so she'll be far too big and heavy to hold her own party. I have to admit - I'm delighted! Me and my partner adore Halloween whereas she just likes an excuse to have a party, and I'm not being horrible but I know her parties aren't as good as mine tend to be. 

Anyone else ever have problems with friends deciding they want to do Halloween themselves, even though you know you're 'the' person for it? I'd never tell her how happy I am that she CAN'T do it, I'm just hoping next year she won't want to do it either because she'll have a one year-old


----------



## Xane (Oct 13, 2010)

Really the best parties are at the _biggest house_ assisted by the people with the _biggest imaginations_ (as well as the ones with the _biggest wallets_). I consider myself an excellent party planner but I just don't have the space at my place to throw anything decent. But I do help organize a giant party held at a rented space (but the biggest problems with renting a place are the idiotic catering rules and the "no catering fee" is usually twice what the actual catering costs) and we always have a great time.

It can generate bad feelings though. A few other groups of friends in our area with a lot of overlapping people have been relatively nice about not having parties on the same weekends in October but since we're both large enough to have people come in from out of town, it comes down to "I can't afford to do both" and the other group tries to throw more money into their parties but the original one is still the bigger one.


----------



## cathartik (Apr 27, 2010)

Wow that would be a scare to me. I don't host any party but Halloween, so every one of my friends and family members know not to plan a party. Maybe I am selfish but I get a huge kick out entertaining people that night.


----------



## Tannasgach (Nov 1, 2009)

I love going to other people's Halloween parties! I get to pick up new ideas, don't have to pay for the food/drinks and there's no clean up the next day.


----------



## Xane (Oct 13, 2010)

Bleh. At smaller houseparties with closer friends where a bunch of us wind up spending the night... it's way too easy to get me to start helping with the cleanup the next day  Which is only polite, anyway, but I feel stupid being the only one that sticks around _every time_.


----------



## Mordessa (Jul 23, 2007)

LOL!! That's so funny, and I'm glad that your friend's reason for not being able to have a party this year is a happy reason, otherwise there might be all kinds of icky guilt involved in your own happiness, and who needs that! Hehehe  

Since Halloween is almost non-existent in Sweden, or in my part of Sweden anyway, I have had very little competition for being THE Halloween Hostess.  And I'm very thankful for that. There was one girl who came to my first party (which turned out extremely lame, since hardly anybody came) and the next year she didn't come, and then the year after that she threw her own party on the same night. I was a little disgruntled about that, but not overly so, as she wasn't a close friend and had her own group of friends so none of my guests would be attending her party anyway. Besides, by then, my parties were known to be the ragers and everybody I wanted to come was coming. Hehehe 

At this point, I don't think any of our friends would even THINK of trying to have a Halloween party on the same night as our party, at least I seriously hope not. I don't know what I would do! I'd be crushed! But, Halloween is starting to catch on a bit here, in fact, last year, the grade school in our town had been so inspired by our haunted house the year before last, that they made a haunted house in the school for the kiddies.  I was so happy! I wish they would have asked me to help, but since I don't have kids, they probably didn't even consider it. Oh well.  

I'm actually psyched because the neighbors have been asking me to help organize a kids Halloween party for the neighborhood kids this year, which will be LOTS of fun! 

Sorry, got a bit off track there, but anyway, I think you totally lucked out that your friend happens to be unable to do her party at the same time, so now you have to make yours alllllll the rage so nobody will even think of attending somebody else's on the same night. lol!  (I have a great game suggestion if you want to ensure a TON of fun, btw, I wish I could do the same game again this year, but now I'm racking my brain to come up with something new. Lemme know if you're interested!)


----------



## RunawayOctober (Jul 3, 2011)

I had a really hard time deciding to throw a party this year. We have friends who typically throw THE Halloween party. So, in order to not step on toes, we planned it for the weekend before they typically throw their party and sent them a Save The Date. She was ecstatic! I was flabbergasted. Halloween is their anniversary, and her husband had asked that they not throw a party this year, and she was really down about there not being a party for our friends. So it all worked out in the end. 

Sadly, some unforeseen circumstances have popped up and my budget is far less than is comfortable, but I'm still gonna try my best to out-do her. ;D


----------



## MissMandy (Apr 18, 2011)

First let me just say, that if she's one of your best friends, then she should know how much you love Halloween and shouldn't be moving in on your territory like that. If she wants to throw a party too, then the polite thing to do would be to have it 2-3 weeks away from yours. If one of my closest friends tried throwing a party on the same night as mine, knowing how much I adore Halloween, I'd be quite  and 

With that said, I kinda sorta ALMOST had that problem last year. I'd say it was about this time last year, maybe a tad earlier, when I decided to have a Halloween party. The second I had the idea, I posted it on facebook. Almost emediately, someone commented on my post, saying she was thinking of doing one too. At that point, I really didn't "hold the torch" for Halloween parties because it was my first time throwing one. But the way I saw it was, I called it first lol. Luckily, I'm not close to this person, she's more of an acquaintance, so I really didn't care. But, I know her through some of my very close friends. So if she were to have a party the same night as mine, then these mutual friends of ours would be tworn on which party to go to. She tried getting me to change the date, but eventually she backed down....thankfully. She actually ended up coming to my party. Was going on and on all night long about what an awesome job I did, how I should do this professionaly, and that I HAVE to do this every year lol


----------



## Tannasgach (Nov 1, 2009)

If someone I knew deliberately had a party on the same night that I was hosting mine that would involve mutual friends, I'd be pissed too. I'd confront them with it and ask them to change the date. I like to have my party the week before Halloween so people aren't party hopping that night and this way I know I "set the bar". lol But I like to go to the parties myself on Halloween weekend.


----------



## adam (Aug 1, 2008)

Tannasgach said:


> If someone I knew deliberately had a party on the same night that I was hosting mine that would involve mutual friends, I'd be pissed too. I'd confront them with it and ask them to change the date. I like to have my party the week before Halloween so people aren't party hopping that night and this way I know I "set the bar". lol But I like to go to the parties myself on Halloween weekend.


Totally. Another thing that burns me is when they have a party and the decorations are boring, cutesy and not at all cool. Its more like a "get together," if you don't have elaborate decorations. Another thing is when only a few people show up, that's how you know you won't stay long and everyone else went to the other "better" party haha.


----------



## printersdevil (Sep 7, 2009)

I wish I could go o someone's Halloween party so that could just have fun without all the work. I would still do both of mine though.


----------



## Mordessa (Jul 23, 2007)

BOTH of yours Printer? You do more than one Halloween party?


----------



## HKitten (Sep 20, 2009)

Mordessa said:


> (I have a great game suggestion if you want to ensure a TON of fun, btw, I wish I could do the same game again this year, but now I'm racking my brain to come up with something new. Lemme know if you're interested!)


Ooh I'm very interested! I've got a couple of games already but even if I don't use something new this year, I'm already starting to think about next year haha 

I do love the idea of going to someone else's party - if the same effort was going to go into it! I'm not being nasty when I say that, Halloween is not a big deal for most of my friends so I know anyone else having a party would be a few 'happy halloween' banners, some rubber bats and a few bowls of twiglets. Whereas I'm itching to get my party set up and it's only August. I spend half my work day surreptitiously surfing the web for Sorting Hat replicas! No one I know would put in the same effort so going somewhere else wouldn't feel as good 

Hopefully, like someone else suggested, this year will be so awesome that people won't want anyone else to have a party


----------



## MissMandy (Apr 18, 2011)

What the hell is a twiglet?


----------



## DelibertiFam (Sep 20, 2010)

I have to say that is one of my favortie things about being a military family. We move every three years, and we ALWAYS have at least 30 ppl. DH makes is Platoon wide, and so by the time ppl want us to show them how to do a great party, we show them, then move, leaving a trail or inspired soon to be halloween fanatics in our wake!!! In the one time we had previous ppl lad at the same base we were at, we rented a huge hall and combined!!! it was fantastic!


----------



## Jack Skellington (Oct 25, 2005)

I'm the only one in our circle of friends who has a Halloween party. We've all got our Holidays staked out. I have Halloween, my neighbor has the 4th of July and so on. It works out really well. Besides no one is willing to go to the lengths that I do for Halloween. Everyone even knows the date of the party in advance every year. We actually alternate the intensity every year. This year it's a pull out all the stops Halloween party and I go crazy with decorating and my Haunted House. Next year it's Sally doing some accent decorating, no Haunted House and I make pizza. It works out well since she doesn't like me taking over the basement for the HH.

I've often said to my friends that any one of them could host the party and I'll just bring all the stuff over and set up there. So far no one has been willing to take me up on that idea.


----------



## Elise (Oct 8, 2010)

MissMandy said:


> What the hell is a twiglet?


Ahahahahahahaha! That was pretty much my first thought too.


----------



## dippedstix (Jul 2, 2009)

LOL!! Totally cracked me up!


----------



## Halloween Scream (Sep 29, 2010)

It has been my dream ever since I was a little girl to host Halloween parties at my own house. So when my husband and I moved in to our first home two years ago I was thrilled to become fast friends with all of the neighbors, but a little worried since another family had hosted the Halloween party the last four years. It became pretty apparent that my neighbor did not like hosting parties, but put up with it since nobody else would. I very nicely approached her about the issue, told her Halloween was my absolute favorite holiday and that I loved throwing elaborate parties. I asked her if she wouldn't mind if I hosted the event that year, but she was still welcome to invite any of her non-neighbor friends who were used to coming. She was thrilled! She brought all her friends and helped with the booze, so grateful to not have to be planning. We had an amazing night and ended up meeting a bunch of new people! Now I'm known as the "Halloween Queen" of the neighborhood and I don't think I'll ever have to compete with anyone else. So I guess my advice if you have conflicting interests would be to just have a nice conversation and see what will really make everyone happy!


----------



## Mz Skull (Nov 18, 2005)

Our group is like Jack's.....we all have a holiday we do parties for....my good friend has always wanted to do a halloween party too so she has a halloween birthday party for her daughter each yr......she always checks my date to make sure she doesn't do it the same time....she says she will never miss our party!!!


----------



## MHooch (Jun 15, 2007)

Wow, so much drama. I never thought about my Halloween party as competing with anyone else's. Maybe because I've been doing it for so long, and all my close friends know that we are the Halloween party house. And our house is small, but we manage to host 30-50 people ( spilling into the backyard on a good weather night last year really helped). One of the doctors I work with did tell me just yesterday that she wanted to have her Halloween party on the night before mine this year, so she could come to mine, because she had heard it was so fun. (Never mind that she hasn't been invited) But it is nice that people are saying good things about the party.

That said, does anyone else but me then feel pressured to amp it up each year, and top what was done in years past? Stresses me out just a little.  Thoughts?


----------



## Trinity1 (Sep 5, 2009)

None of our friends have parties. We all usually have small get togethers...but that's it. Our Halloween parties have been on a smaller scale due to the size of our house....but so far...we're the only ones that have gone all out with the decor. I mean, if you come to my Halloween partay, no matter how small it is, you will be emersed in the spirit of the season!!! Every where you look there will be something reminding you of why you are here. And then there is also the fact that I can't stop talking about Halloween that will also remind you why you are here


----------



## star_girl_mag (Aug 5, 2008)

Good lord I know exactly how you feel. Plenty of good friends didn't show up for a Halloween party one year cause they were at another equally good friend's party that she was throwing the SAME night, without even MENTIONING it to me. The following year we threw a party together to try to make it so that ALL of our mutual friends could attend and we got into such a fight over the whole thing that it nearly ended our 7 year friendship. This year she will be throwing another party that I know will consist of a solitary bag of cobwebs, a jack-o-lantern and everyone getting sh** faced doing shots of cheap vodka. She is throwing her party on an earlier date than mine which not only pisses me off because because I feel that some people won't be willing to party 2 weekends in a row, and therefore will not go to mine. It even further pisses me off because we have some out-of-town mutual friends that will be gone by the time my party rolls around. Here's where I feel like a real b**** though, I let her have the date that she wanted cause it's her Birthday, but I secretly hope she cancels it. I also would throw a party earlier but there are 2 weddings in that month and I'd have to push it all the way back to September! ;/


----------



## Mordessa (Jul 23, 2007)

Wow Star, are you sure it DIDN'T end your 7 year friendship?  ... Sounds like you are still pretty upset about it, not that I can blame ya! I would be livid over somebody doing something like that to me, especially if they are a close friend and know how much Halloween means to me, and how much effort I put into my parties, etc. It's even worse that she does this with so little prep for her own party, I mean, if she was an enthusiast like you, I could see maybe trading off who gets to have the party each year or something, but from the way you've described the situation, it sounds to me like she's not much of a friend, stealing your thunder like that. 

Is Halloween her birthday or is her birthday the day of her earlier-dated party? And is her party about her birthday that just happens to be in October or is it about Halloween?


----------



## Xane (Oct 13, 2010)

Well, think of it this way... those who prefer the "get trashed in a room with a few plastic spiders and a pumpkin" style of party are probably not who you want to be attending yours anyway. Still sucks though.


----------

