One of NYC’s Top Event Planners Gives Us His Tips For Throwing a Party On *Any* Budget
Beautiful centerpiece. My name is Jove Meyer. I’m a wedding planner and designer based in New York City.
And then six over there.
The first three steps to planning any great event is understanding your guest count, your budget, and then your location and season. And each of those sort of impacts the other, so your guest count will then impact your budget, which will also impact the spaces that you’re gonna look at to host your party.
More and more people are looking to have events in unique spaces and I love that vibe, but what they don’t realize is if you rent a beautiful, empty space, you’re bringing everything in. And then all of a sudden, you’re over budget.
So if it’s a more intimate event, a restaurant is a great option. It comes with plates, flatware, glassware, china, bartenders, and if you love the ambience, then you already are saving so much money on decor and rentals.
I’m loving how people are embracing color in their celebrations. Colors are emotive of fun times and high energy. Most candles come in white but they also come in every color of the rainbow. And when buying candles, you wanna buy high and low. This way we’re playing with shape, size, and texture, which really sets the ambience for a great party.
The flower of the moment that is the most affordable but also making a comeback is the carnation. You can buy a lot of them, and make a big wow moment without breaking the bank.
When thinking about a place card, we always recommend an envelope. It’s a fun, easy thing that you have at home, and that way you can either lay it flat, or you can pop it up to have some extra height and it makes a big impact on your table. Another fun way to surprise your guests is to put a note inside their envelope. Here, we did fortunes. So all of our guests tonight get a random fortune that’s uplifting and fun.
An important part to any event is the cocktail, the alcohol. So, we always recommend having a beautiful bar with a ton of garnishes. This is such a fun way for guests to feel like they make cocktails. They can pick as much or as little as they want of every ingredient, and blend it all together for the cocktail of their dreams.
When hosting a party, you don’t want to play server and host. A station is a great way to do that, because you can do all the preparation in advance, and then guests can help themselves as they want. Easy. You should throw a party that has your stamp on it, and that makes you happy, because then your friends are totally gonna be happy.
