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How to Throw an Awesome New Year’s Eve Party Without Going Broke!

New Year’s Eve is always a hard night to plan for. There’s a lot of pressure to start your year off on the right foot by having an amazing time. The problem is that it’s hard to plan for an amazing time when you’re not sure what to do or where to go! This year I decided to take matters into my own hands and throw an amazing party to guarantee that I’d have fun.

Here are my tips on how to throw a fun New Year’s Eve party without breaking the bank:

1. Use Paperless Post for your invitations. Instead of using pricey paper invitations or taking the lame Facebook-invite route, hit up Paperless Post for the perfect mix of classy and cheap invitations.

2. Make people dress up. My party was black tie, meaning that the ladies were asked to wear evening gowns and the gentlemen were asked to wear tuxedos. While you don’t have to go this far, do have people dress up. It’s so much easier to have a fun time when you look fabulous.

3. Have people bring a bottle of their favorite champagne to share. This way you’ll avoid guzzling too much Andre Peach Passion on NYE.

4. Get decorations and plastic champagne flutes from Oriental Trading Co. It’s SO much cheaper than going to your local drugstore!

5. Go out to a restaurant and ask everyone to pay for their own dinner. When you’re college or even in your early twenties, nobody expects you to pay for everyone’s dinner! Pick a swanky restaurant though – you’ll want to go somewhere fabulous if you’re all dressed up! We went to Island Creek Oyster Bar in Boston.

6. Make your own fancy cocktails. I made pineapple-cranberry vodka by soaking a fresh pineapple and cranberries in a pitcher with vodka for 12 hours. It was delicious, easy, and looked really luxe! Mix it with club soda and voila – a fancy cocktail!

Here are some pictures from my party:

My friend Taylor with Stephanie and me at Island Creek Oyster Bar

The entire group at the restaurant:

The gentlemen in their tuxes:

And the ladies with our tiaras from Oriental Trading Co!

As President and Co-Founder of Her Campus Media, Windsor is in charge of all revenue and monetization strategies. Under her watch, Her Campus has done state of the art college marketing programs for clients including Under Armour, Aussie Haircare, Neutrogena, Coke with Coffee, Bed Bath & Beyond, Hallmark, VS Pink, Ralph Lauren Fragrances, H&R Block, The Home Depot, WeWork, Grubhub and more.  Windsor is a 2010 honors graduate of Harvard College. She has also been named to Forbes 30 Under 30, BusinessWeek's 25 Under 25 Best Young Entrepreneurs, Inc. magazine's 30 Under 30 Coolest Young Entrepreneurs, Glamour magazine's 20 Amazing Young Women, and The Boston Globe's 25 Most Stylish Bostonians. She lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband and two daughters. Follow Windsor on Instagram: @windsorwestern

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