- a crowd mingles before dinner
Find out how many people you can invite, especially long lost friends, then use that information to find the right size venue. If it's under 50 people, it might make a nice house party. But when the list of guests starts to fill up a sheet of paper, consider throwing the party at a restaurant, hall or park with catering. If budget is a consideration, ask friends if they have access to a property where everyone can bring food for a potluck dinner. Outdoor scenery in nice weather is ideal, but if there is music to be played make sure the sound can be confined to the designated area and that the outdoor venue has electric power available. - DJ set up
A high point of any event for a crowd in which everyone knows each other is the toast. A DJ with a wireless microphone can pass around the mic to anyone in the crowd and let people tell funny stories and pay tribute to the guest of honor. Sometimes this can take an hour, but it's worth it because it makes the event very personalized. Toasts can produce the best moments of the party and make great content for video. As long as the DJ is organized and can keep the toasts flowing, open mic toasts are a great way to get everyone involved. Toasts usually happen during dinner and before dancing. - outdoor concert with Mick Martin & The Blues Rockers
Nostalgia will usually play into a 40th birthday party unless the guest of honor completely consumes current products and discards everything from the past. A lot of people hang on to their favorite songs from their younger days. So if you have a DJ make sure that music from the birthday guest's various eras are played. Find out what themes or musical genres resonate the best with the birthday "boy" or "girl." If you are not sure what would make a nice theme, go with a fun theme such as beach, costume, flashback or something that reflects the guest of honor's career.
The music portion of the event has the most chance to create a vibrant crowd atmosphere, making the event as memorable as possible. - A great asset to a party of this magnitude is someone who knows a lot about media production in the form of slide shows, videos and web design. The modern way to do a slide show is on a computer with a PowerPoint presentation, which bypasses the need for physical slides but still requires a projector. It doesn't take a technical guru to put this type of show together since PowerPoint is a straight-forward user-friendly Microsoft program that creates high quality transitions such as one picture dissolving into another and custom animations. Video production has become incredibly simple with Apple's iMovie that comes with the iMac. This video program allows you to easily edit raw video and add titles that at one time required very expensive equipment and technical expertise. Other media to consider would be a special website for the event that includes a guest book with comments and as many photos as possible. Websites are today's time capsules that have become the key to preserving the past and present for the future.
- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -
