Monday, June 3, 2013

How to throw a Progressive Dinner Party!




Who doesn’t love to throw a dinner party? But…no one wants all that work! Why not organize a Progressive Dinner Party? Here’s how it works: At a progressive dinner party, guests share the duties of cooking, entertaining and cleaning up. Dinner often begins with appetizers and drinks in one location, moves on to the salads, then entrée in another, and concludes with dessert and coffee in a third. This gives the traditional dinner party a twist.

Ready to give it a try? Here’s how to plan a progressive dinner party.  Choose your hosts.  Select three or four people who would be interested in participating in a progressive dinner party.  Ideally, the participants should live fairly close to one another to reduce the distance that needs to be drive between homes. Plan the menu. To plan a progressive dinner party, decide what each host will serve and the order in which the homes will be visited. The first house usually serves appetizers and cocktails, the second salads, the third the main course, and the last house dessert. Let each host know ahead of time approximately when the guests will be arriving at their location.   

Prepare the invitation list. It’s important to only invite as many people as each host can accommodate. If one host has a small home, this may limit your guest list. Send out the invitations. Include the times and the address of each participating host in the progressive dinner. Make sure to include an RSVP. Follow up by calling each guest to confirm who is coming and who isn’t so you can give the hosts an accurate count. Keep the progressive dinner moving on schedule. Try to restrict the time spent at each house to forty-five minutes or so and make sure everyone leaves on time. Spending too much time at one house will throw the entire schedule off and upset the hosts.  

Don’t forget to thank each host who participated after the progressive dinner with a special hostess gift such as a nice bottle of wine, a handmade basket of goodies, or arranged flowers. 

Enjoy and please send ideas or photos from your party! 

Cheers!
Angee

 

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