Hosting Cocktail Parties

4 times a year (once a season) my husband Kevin and I host a 2-Hour Cocktail Party. We learned about the concept from Nick Gray. Although Kevin and I have lived in the Virginia Beach area since 2008-2009, neither of us is from this town and have gathered an eclectic set of friends who in some cases have never met each other.

In this article I talk about the reason why we started hosting parties, our first party experience, and our second party success.

Why We Host

We were intrigued by the idea of a 2-Hour Cocktail Party for several reasons:

1. It sounded fun!
2. It sounded grown up and now that we’re in our 40s, we wanted to host a different kind of party
3. We liked the emphasis on talking and getting to know each other. I host lots of communities professionally and knows how special this kind of deep connection can be and Kevin works at a restaurant that emphasizes the importance of hospitality, so he has his own take.
4. We have separate friend groups that we wanted to mix together, from Kevin’s two jobs at the fire department and a restaurant, to my work and community projects and friends we’ve met through parenting or in the neighborhood.
5. 2 hours in the middle of the week is such a delightful interruption to the grind!

Our First Party

We hosted our first party this summer and had a blast! It was relaxing, inspiring, and super fun. We served light snacks, cocktails and mocktails that reminded us of the summer months and of course, had to put our own twist on the icebreakers Nick recommends, making it just a little weird with a deck of cards we found on a family trip to South Dakota by one of my favorite authors Chuck Klosterman.

Here’s how we introduced the idea to our guests:

“Some people are extremely good at making small talk. These people are better known as “idiots”. These are the kind of humans who can talk to a stranger for 40 minutes without learning anything essential about who that stranger is – they talk about the weather and about other people, and they mention what kind of car they drive and how old their children are. They have conversations in public that are ultimately no different than silence in an empty room. We refuse to be that kind of person. This party will feature several hypothetical questions where how one answers matters far more than the literal conclusion. If you want to find out who other people really are, these are the conversations you need to have. Prepare to become more interesting.”

Not only do the questions quickly generate great conversation, every single person at the party gets a chance to talk and get to know each other. It builds instant camaraderie in a short period of time!

Our Second Success

We hosted our next party on Election Night. We were all sick of the ads (our state had a prominent governor’s race this year) and were frazzled by school schedules, so it seemed the perfect time to interrupt our usual programming with a little party.

Our guest list was about ¼ returning guests, the rest all new. Each first timer left with a book hand selected from my personal library with a handwritten note for why it was picked and our second timers got a handwritten recipe from Kevin’s personal favorites.

Conclusion

We knew the party was a success when our group photo thank you message led to a lively group text of folks remembering the party together, with one friend taking some creative liberties to turn our photo into a depiction of the wild and crazy discussion!

If you’d like advice or encouragement to host your own 2 hour cocktail party, reach out! Or, better yet, come to our next one!