My ideal hangout with friends consists of hosting a dinner party with a fun theme, sharing good dishes, and a night full of laughter, games, and pictures, so this has kind of become my forte over the years. Having a themed dinner party with friends makes things so much more exciting, especially when you have friends who can commit to a theme. Summer is coming up, so what better time than now to think of some fun ways to spice up hometown gatherings, or even for those who have a summer birthday coming up.
Italian summer
The idea of an Italian summer is a perfect summer theme to share with friends as it’s more of a dinner party setting with a sit-down dinner to share with your friends, all dressed up and catching up about college life. A perfect way to start your summer off is by bringing the essence of Northern Italy to your backyard.
This starts with a cute little e-invite to set the tone, theme, and dress code. Next, you’d plan some dishes to prepare and invite your guests to bring something to share: things like light refreshing salads, different pasta recipes like pesto or vodka, chicken cutlets, bruschetta, pasta salads, etc. Depending on your group’s allergies and what food they typically enjoy, the menu can vary and allow for some new ideas and recipes to perfectly cater to your guests. The theme is going to follow with some light, floral dresses, linen outfits, flowy dresses and skirts, or some bold summer dresses that perfectly encapsulate a Euro-summer.
Again, you can find tons of inspiration for what you want your party to look like and set the tone from there. Next, is making sure the table setting looks nice using a light tablecloth, table runners, candles, some pretty leaves and florals, even some lemons to really take us to the Amalfi Coast. Thrifting sets of plates and cups can be really affordable if you are hosting a small group under 10, and you can continue to use those thrifted sets throughout the rest of your summer hosting, or use what you have at home already.
This is a really versatile theme, and you can choose to make it exactly how you want it, so if you want to plan your first summer dinner party, I’d say this would be a great theme to start with. You can play the Call Me By Your Name soundtrack to haunt your friends who have watched, plan cute activities like painting, making bracelets, or any other cute craft ideas you can get your friends to do.
Jazz Club
This was the theme of my 19th birthday dinner party, which I had hosted at home, and I had absolutely fallen in love with the idea once I saw it. My birthday is in March, and since it’s (typically) still chilly around this time of year, hosting a cute theme indoors was ideal. The idea of a jazz club dinner party doesn’t make sense to most, but for those who get it, get it.
I’m a huge jazz girl and the environment of a jazz club is the ultimate dream, but since it was still cold, I am still underage, and don’t really want to drive into the city, the idea of a jazz club in the comfort of my own home was perfect. We dimmed the lights, I set the table with candles, flowers, a cute table runner, a dark tablecloth, martini glasses I bought for our Shirley Temples, and painted a banner backdrop to welcome my guests to my at-home jazz club. The party was so intimate and laid back, it was everything I had hoped for.
I played some jazz hits in the background as we ate dinner, which consisted of some pasta dishes, salads, and bread. I think making a table of hors d’oeuvres is also a wonderful way to spend less time cooking and more time with your guests. My friends and I enjoyed our mocktails and took pictures with my digital camera.
Dressing for the theme is way less complicated than it looks, just dress exactly how you would to a jazz club, but for those who still don’t understand, dress in some dark colors, reds, skirts, dresses, wear fun prints, and you can really make it whatever you want and invite your guests to find something that works for them. Sharing inspiration pictures with your guests gives them somewhere to start. The theme is pretty different from a Roaring Twenties theme, but there is some overlap. The main colors I focused on for the theme were black, burgundy, brown, gold, and several shades of red.
Jersey Shore
This is less of a dinner party theme and more of a gathering-with-friends-themed party, but of course, you can change that to fit how you want it. I really love this idea for the summer, as you and your friends all come home for the summer, and your hometown shenanigans can start. Jersey Shore is the iconic Y2K summer show filled with chaos and drama that you know and love. I love this theme for those with a summer birthday; hosting it outside in a backyard or pool area is a great way to ensure there is enough space to move around and dance with friends.
The dress code is pretty straightforward, especially if you’ve watched the show, but I like to think of the Y2K outfits with neon colors, fun patterns, animal print, big fur boots, big sunglasses, fold-over shorts, Ed Hardy tops, off-the-shoulder tops with cuts in the back, etc. You are bound to find some inspiration from JWoww and Snooki, and if you’re not hip to the show, Pinterest is a great help to give your guests somewhere to start. I love this theme, the Y2K outfits, and the music is what really ties it together. Loading up a playlist full of hits from the 2010s will really tie the entire party together.
Providing a ton of snacks, drinks, and even possibly buying a couple of pizzas, chip and dip variations, or catering a large quantity of something like sandwiches, can take a huge load off your shoulders and let you focus on the crowd instead.
Party animals
This is another good theme that you can adopt for your birthday or just a regular dinner party with friends. It’s a really fun theme where you have your friends dress up in some fun animal print and party hats. I find this to be a really cute yet simple theme, especially if you need a quick and easy birthday theme.
A good animal print set or dress and party hats are all you and your guests need. The theme is really straightforward with lots of animal print, a cute painted banner, and the use of the colors brown, black, gold, maroon, and obviously the various prints, usually lots of cheetah, tiger, leopard, and zebra print. This is a cute theme to host, whether it’s inside or outside. So, rain or shine, I think the party theme still works out very well.
Depending on whether or not you want to make this more of a friendly gathering or an actual dinner party amongst your friends, you can decide if you want to cook a meal, make it potluck style, or just provide lots of snacks and drinks. I think that’s the beauty of hosting: being able to take a theme and translate it to cater to a dinner theme or just a birthday party crowd, so you can pick and choose different elements of planning and adjust to fit your preferences and you and your crowd’s needs.
Murder Mystery
The perfect theme for my fellow true crime fans out there, and what better way to keep a dinner party with friends interactive and actually entertaining. A murder mystery theme usually better fits a dinner party group, keeping it small and intimate with a close group of friends better suits the theme. Solving a murder mystery case requires lots of patience, thinking, and communication, so the larger the group, the harder it is to communicate and work together.
There are a lot of different ways to go about this theme, depending on your level of creativity and how much work you want to put into it. I have seen lots of different groups on TikTok create their own murder mystery case, characters, plots, evidence, settings, etc. However, I have seen groups who have just taken the easier route of purchasing the store-bought murder mystery cases you can find in the game section, and have just as much fun with less work, so it really depends on how creative you are and how much time and effort you want to put into it for your guests.
Solving the case is the main event of the night, but it makes it infinitely more fun to have your friends dress up as old-timey detectives, suspects, and characters from the specific case you’ll be working on, and characters that look like they came straight out of a case from the 1920s. Dressing up is optional, but it makes the night more fun for you and your guests.
Since I find this theme to work better as a dinner party theme, I think it helps to prepare some family-style meals for you and your friends, but the beauty of this is that you can really just make anything that your guests would like, since there isn’t really a specific route to take with the dinner portion. Making this night also potluck style really does help provide lots of different variety and options, so that everyone is fed and ready to solve a murder mystery case.
Once dinner is over and you can clear the table, that’s when you get into character and start laying all the suspects and evidence out on the table.
2010-2016
I am a complete sucker for the 2000s and 2010s, whether it’s the style, the music, or just overall vibes, I just knew I had to have an iconic party to celebrate turning 20 to make up for being a tween in the best era of our generation. I hosted a 2014-themed party this past March for my 20th birthday, because what better way to enter your 20s?
The dress code is an important part of this theme because it’s important to distinguish the differences between the different 2010 eras and years in which each era came from. So, once I decided who I was going to invite, I sent many different pictures showing outfit inspiration and what our theme really looks like, to keep things lore-accurate and true to 2014. The 2010s had a lot of different aesthetics with 2014 being known for the bright “swag-era” filled with EDM and hip-hop, or the Tumblr girl era with the grunge vibe, Doc Martens, stripes, American Apparel, and The Neighborhood and Lorde taking over. So pick your specific era and vibe or let everyone choose their own vibe and showcase all the different aesthetics in one room. This definitely helped my friends understand the vibes I was going for after I was able to send them pictures of the specific theme I chose, choosing the swag, rave girl, EDM vibe more specifically. It’s truly a blessing to have friends who know how to follow a theme, so I’d say this definitely helped.
The outfit inspiration definitely had a lot of bright colors, animal print, glasses, mustaches on our fingers, shirts and hats with things like “swag” and “lol,” neon shutter sunglasses, glow sticks, cut up tops, “keep calm and ___ on,” etc. There is a lot of versatility, which definitely helps make sure everyone can dress up and still feel comfortable while staying on theme. The backdrop we used was some fringed tinsel in purple and silver foil, which was a really cute combination that I thought fit the theme perfectly. I have seen lots of different people print and create photobooth props with things like Snapchat filters from that time, funny quotes, and memes, which definitely would have made the photos way cuter.
The music was also a huge portion of the party theme, which consisted of a lot of EDM throwbacks, Calvin Harris, Skrillex, David Guetta, Zedd, and any of those iconic songs from that era. Before the party, I created a collaborative playlist with my friends, and we all added some of our favorite songs from that time, and even experimented with the Spotify mixing feature, which was really fun.
This definitely wasn’t a dinner party theme for me personally, but you can definitely use some parts and change some aspects of the planning. My friends and I ate dinner together before we got ready and set up, but it definitely wasn’t a dinner party kind of thing, it was more casual, and we relied heavily on snacks throughout the night.
This was my favorite theme I have ever hosted personally, so I am really glad I was able to go through with it and be surrounded by the best group of friends to celebrate entering my twenties.
Circus
The concept of a circus party theme is something I recently learned about, and one that I think is insanely underrated. I find that this is the perfect birthday party theme to host as it’s really creative and not oversaturated like some other birthday themes. I really like the idea of the birthday girl wearing a fun costume, dressing like a cute clown, ringleader, or even lion tamer would be really cute. Your guests could wear some simple going-out fits like skirts, mini dresses, corsets, or even wide-leg pants and tops (whatever they’re comfortable with), and let the makeup and accessories carry the outfit. Fun clown/party hats are also really cute, and it’s fun to have something for the guests to wear during the party.
The background could be a really cute hand-painted banner with a creative pun and some red curtains to give the look of a circus tent. I also find the idea of streamers flowing throughout the ceiling to be really fun and definitely adds to the theme’s atmosphere. I have also seen many uses of different color palettes where the typical circus colors like red, black, white, gold, are replaced with a pastel pink color palette with baby pinks, blue pastels, white, silver, etc. So, you can definitely get creative with it and make it suited to you and your aesthetic.
Like some of the other themes, I think this can work as a dinner party or a regular party theme, which allows you to take complete creative control of what you would want to prepare for the party or if you want to stick to small light snacks and sides. If you choose to follow the theme, you could set up a themed table with some carnival favorites and snacks like mini corndogs, popcorn in the cute boxes, soft pretzels, and your favorite desserts like caramel apples. Have fun with it!
Camp
A summer camp theme is the perfect dinner or birthday party theme for a summer spent with friends. For this theme, you can get dressed up and host fun, competitive games. Dressing up for this theme is way easier to follow, as it’s more casual, which can really help in the summer heat to take some stress off of your guests. Keep it basic with a cute baby tee or oversized summer tee, some shorts, braided hair, ponytails, French braids, and any shoes. It’s super simple when it comes to the dress code, so you can put the rest of your focus on the theme, games, and fun competitions.
Depending on what you and your friends are like, you can keep it chill with some arts and crafts like pennant flags, bracelets, painting, or if you guys want to get more competitive and active with the theme, you can have some traditional camp games like water balloon fights, tug of war, cornhole, scavenger hunts, volleyball, mafia, etc. You can also take a more creative route with things like flip-cup tic-tac-toe, rage cage, and relay races. Do whatever fits you and your friends’ dynamic and have fun!
An outdoor barbecue would be perfect for this theme. Put some burgers and hot dogs on the grill and ask guests to bring sides so that everyone has options to choose from, but depending on your invite list, you can adjust by providing different options for those with allergies or dietary restrictions. Some BBQ and snacks are all you need; keep it simple, nothing too heavy or difficult to prep.
A hand-painted banner goes with every party theme, but the summer camp theme gives you a lot of creative freedom with fun puns to make it yours. Banners like “Welcome to Camp *insert name* Est. *birthday year*” are definitely a favorite, or if your friend group has a funny inside joke or group name, you can make it “Camp *insert name*,” to have fun with the theme.
Whimsy and Nostalgia
The theme of nostalgia and pure childhood whimsy is one that is incredibly cute, especially when doing it with the hometown friends you grew up with. This would be a cute dinner party theme or some sort of craft night, presentation night, or just a small get-together, hanging with friends. When done well, this theme is so cute and will allow your inner child to shine again. You can reminisce and relive before you get older and older.
Whether you are using this theme for a dinner party, craft event, or some sort of game night, you have a lot of flexibility to tweak things to best fit your aesthetic and space. For decor, I would use things like the colorful paper chains that hang from the ceilings, tons of colorful streamers, balloons, fringe backdrops, and star banners to decorate your space. The more color, the better!
Whether you choose to provide them or make an activity out of it, princess crowns/hats are so cute and give the vibe of a children’s book character. Providing craft supplies, like lace, hats, ribbon, fabric, satin, and coloring tools, can give your guests enough room and space to become creative. Not only would it be a cute activity that fits the theme, but these are also something that can force your friends to just sit down, unwind, get crafty, and chat.
Dress code for this theme is one that is going to be pretty crucial, so it would help to give your guests some inspiration, or make sure it is indicated on the invitation. Whether you want you and your guests to go all out in dresses or keep it simple with jeans and flowy spring tops, is up to you. Floral summer dresses and sundresses with plenty of room to twirl and flow in are the perfect way to dress in the heat while also staying on theme, plus a cute summer dress just makes everything so much cuter.
Lastly, because food is not the main thing surrounding the theme, you can take as much creative liberty as you want, whip up whatever you choose, make it potluck style, or make small things for your guests to snack on, like tea sandwiches, to make it into a picnic. If you plan on cooking and hosting outside, I would focus on light dishes that are refreshing and not too heavy. Aim for different kinds of salads, fruits, croissant sandwiches, charcuterie, and fun-looking cupcakes with colors and designs that would please the queen herself, Fancy Nancy.
conclusion
Whether you are hosting a party as an excuse to get with friends or to celebrate a birthday, having a well-thought-out theme makes the night more memorable and iconic. This summer is the perfect time to start experimenting with hosting and try new ways to spice up summer nights, pool parties, or even just simple hangouts. Hosting a well-curated themed party not only makes the memories last, but it gives you and your guests an excuse to dress up and try new things together.