Throwing a house party in London

House parties are always a popular social event in London, particularly in these credit-crunchy times! If you’ve recently moved to London, they’re a great way to expand your social circle, particularly if all of your flatmates invite a few ‘new’ people who the others don’t yet know. In order to throw a good party that’s talked about for all the right reasons, but allows your house not to look like it’s been involved in a nuclear disaster, there are some top tips that you should follow:

1. You and your flatmates could stock up on cheap bottles of booze. You can get Majestic Wine to deliver in bulk to your house. Stick to wine, fake champagne and beer to make it more affordable for you.

2. Talk to your flatmates about how many people you’d ideally like to invite. You might all want to invite workmates, friends of your girlfriend/boyfriend, friends from home, friends from your sports team etc etc. So you definitely need to work together on your guest list so there are no nasty surprises.

3. Decide if you’d like your party to be themed. Fancy dress/costume parties are really popular in London. There are plenty of fancy dress stores in London. Angels is an amazing store on Shaftesbury Avenue that does also do mail order if you’re too busy to visit.

4. Send out your invitations via email or Facebook. Invitations through the post are a bit ridiculous for just a simple house party. You could send out the email 2 or 3 weeks in advance (people get booked up quickly in London) and then send out some reminders nearer the time. Maybe follow up with a text to people who haven’t RSVP’d.

5. On your invitation, request that everyone brings a bottle. If you’re particularly worried about your carpet getting trashed, then you could have a ‘white drinks only’ policy to ensure that everyone steers clear of creating dreaded red wine stains!

6. On the day of the party, make an Ipod playlist (or similar) and try and cater for everyone’s music tastes. If your guests want to change the music, let them!

7. Make sure that you hide all breakables away somewhere safe, so that your house is party-proofed!

8. Invest in some plastic cups (you can even get fancy plastic champagne flutes these days) so that smashed glasses are kept to a minimum.

9. If you’re worried about upsetting your neighbours with loud music, the best thing to do is go and see them a couple of days before, let them know about the party and invite them to come along. Most neighbours won’t turn up, but will be grateful to receive an invite.

10. Move your furniture around a bit to make a large space for dancing and mingling.

11. Make sure you have some burly blokes around to chuck out any potential ‘gatecrashers’.

12. If the worst happens and you end up running out of booze, contact Just Eat, who should be able to organise a late-night booze run for you.