The ten fundamentals of throwing a memorable party

The most important elements of event design as I see it

And Jesus said unto them, "Behold, there was a man in the valleys of Los Angeles who hosted a feast, and it was, like, totally the moment. And it was curated. And it was a situation."

-John 2:10 or something around there, I think

I've hosted close to a thousand events in my life.

Maybe more than that.

Today I thought I'd walk you through the fundamentals of event design as I see it. On one hand, I'm lifting the veil and giving you a peak into my process. “Wait, shouldn’t you guard your secrets with your life? This is YOUR Coca-Cola recipe.” Maybe it is. But I don't believe in scarcity. Instead, I believe the more transparent we are as a society, the more innovation occurs.¹

Basically I'm just hoping that if I reveal my secrets, birthday parties in L.A. will evolve into literally anything other than "come hang out at this bar where you can't hear anyone and we'll be there around 7 but also it might be 8 oh wait it's hard to get an Uber looks like closer to midnight haha".

Let's begin.

1) What even is a curated situation?

cu·rat·ed [ ˈkyoor-ey-tid ] adj.

1. carefully chosen and thoughtfully organized or presented

sit·u·a·tion [ sich-oo-ˈey-shuhn] n.

1. a dynamic and lively setting or circumstance where interesting or unexpected interactions and activities can occur, making the event memorable and engaging

Curated situations are memorable. Asking ourselves WHY we want to gather people together in the same shared space allows these memorable moments to flourish. And if we do this right, we might get lucky and curate a situation in which our guests cultivate relationships that last far beyond the end of the night.

Priya Parker basically wrote an entire book focusing on defining your event’s purpose, which I highly recommend.² TL;DR: when you don't clearly define the purpose of your situation, it’s vague. And it becomes hard to know what to say yes and no to. On the other hand, when you have a clear purpose, it acts as a filtering mechanism for everything from what guests to invite, to what food to serve, to what music to play, and beyond.

The purpose should be specific. Think less "it's my birthday" and more "to look back on my 30s as I move into my 40s." Even in that example, I'm already getting a sense of who to invite (people who meant a lot to me during my 30s), what food I want to serve (my 30s was an entire decade of ramen), and what music to play (Gaga³).

Boom. Now I'm already giddy with excitement. Humans are drawn to a smooth folding-in of intention.

Curate the situation: define a clear purpose so you can use it as a filter for the decisions you’ll make when putting your situation together.

2) Be mean

For game nights, I give my guests an arrival window with a hard start time and a fixed out time. I rarely go over. I also don't allow guests to RSVP if they can't stay the entire time. "Doors open at 5pm, games start promptly at 6pm and run until 10pm. If you can't stay for the entire duration, please RSVP next time!" Guests sometimes text me saying, "I'm going to get there around 8pm, is that cool?"

No.

No, it's not.

I’m mean about it because on one end of the spectrum there's "accommodate everybody" and on the other end of the spectrum there's "host a memorable event." Basically, the more leeway your guests have, the more leeway they'll demand. And even though no one is doing this with malice, it creates an environment where guests feel as though there's a hierarchy, with certain guests getting preferential treatment.

“Wait a second, I showed up on time… what’s the deal here, actually? You know what? I don’t think this is a memorable event… I think it’s…”

“…a casual hang.”

ca·su·al hang [ kazh-oo-uhl hang ] n.

1. a low-key gathering with minimal planning and a laid-back atmosphere, typically lacking any specific agenda or remarkable moments

Person 1: It wasn't great. I got there at 6pm, but people arrived at all different times. It felt like… a casual hang.

Person 2: Oh damn. Did some of you just kinda… break off into a corner and play Cards Against Humanity?

Person 1: Yeah.

Person 2: Oh my God, I’m so sorry.

I love you, casual hangs. I really do. You’re unstructured and relaxed and can sometimes spontaneously be quite engaging.

But that's not what we're doing here.

We're curating a situation.

And situations/parties/events need agreed-upon rituals. And everyone plays by the rules because we're ALL equals here. We ALL show up and participate with enthusiasm. In this context, the rituals become the boundaries of our situation sandbox, where your guests can build memorable moments effortlessly.

Some other rituals I love:

• Everyone wears a name tag at my game nights. Even if everyone knows each other. It’s become iconic and camp and extremely helpful.

• I have a small wooden gratitude tree in my home where you write things you're grateful for on tiny paper leaves and attach them to the tree. Lately I’ve been asking guests to add their own before we begin the evening. It's a vibe.

• My invites typically request that guests "reduce distractions such as unnecessary phone usage." If the event is particularly intimate (such as The Salon), I flat out say: "This is a phone-free event."

Guests have complimented me on giving them permission to put their phones away. Humans crave ritual. Ritual gives us permission and comfort to be on the same page.

Curate the situation: hosts sometimes appear mean when they enforce rituals. Good. We give guests the situation they NEED. Sometimes that looks different from what they think they WANT. Let’s show them the difference. It’s our obligation, really.

3) Pick a date a month away (at least)

Friends of mine sometimes say "yeah, I was going to put something together but no one could make it," only to find out they invited 6 people on Friday at 3pm for a last-minute party on Saturday night.

Yeah, sometimes that kind of magic happens. Most of the time, though, we're already obligated to something, even if that's a mental commitment to lie around and watch that one season of Great British Bake Off with that gay guy Michael because he's weirdly hot? Like, not just HOT hot. But like, weirdly hot? And we're into that? And yeah sometimes that's my Saturday night?

Pick a date a month away. Or more. People want to attend parties. Which is often why they’re not available at the last minute. They’re already signed up for something else. Give them the space to say, “yes, I’d love to join you.”

Another secret sauce element here is that my game nights happen once a month and have for almost 12 years, give or take a pandemic.⁴ What’s something you love to do? Host it on a recurring basis and be consistent. Consistency on a host's part is consistency on a guest's part. If guests know you always host a brunch every third Sunday of the month, they tend keep those times a bit more free.

Curate the situation: don't sabotage yourself by throwing something together at the last minute. Fewer guests will be likely to attend and, in turn, it creates a vicious cycle on our hosting self-esteem.

4) Great guests are salty

Salt is the most important ingredient in the kitchen. Your guests are the most important ingredient at your situation. I think we all have a mental list of our favorite people in the world. And we wish that we could have those exact people at all of our events.

But sometimes they move to fucking Connecticut or whatever.

Or they live in town but they're busy or whatever.

Whatever.

The point is that you can't always have the same exact group of people attend everything you host. So we have to CURATE.

This is the one of the core concepts of my life. And when it comes to guests, it's actually a shit load of fun.

Yes, an entire load of shit of fun.

Let's imagine I meet an incredible couple at a wedding and their names are, for example, Johnathan and Courtney. I blast through all social norms and immediately ask them for their phone number, "I'd love to invite you to a dinner at my place."

Once they're confirmed, I build the remainder of the guest list, using them as the nucleus.⁵ I think—okay, who is most likely to get along with these new friends? How do I best set them up for integration into our L.A. family? Ah yes, Mark and Tiffany. After all, it was their wedding that I met/stole Johnathan and Courtney at.

With each guest you add, it gets a bit more complex because there are additional moving parts. But this complexity is fun! It gives me the same feeling a bottle of champagne feels before it's about to be opened. Bubbly. Excited.

Mike and Julia are the next obvious additions because Mark and Tiffany are good friends with them and they were also at the wedding and met Johnathan and Courtney. That brief interaction will help reduce awkward social friction at the dinner. And now we all have a touchstone for discussion: Mark and Tiffany and how long we all think they're going to stay married.

Remember, though, we said we were going to invite an 8th person. Who should this mystery guest be? Again, FUN!

Ideally they (A) have existing social connections to Mark, Tiffany, Mike, and Julia and (B) have a high chance of getting along with Johnathan and Courtney. My first instinct is Kyle.⁶ But what if Kyle isn’t available?

Heck, what if Mark and Tiffany or Mike and Julia aren’t available? Do I change the date? No. Johnathan and Courtney are confirmed already, so I keep the date and loop whoever isn’t available into another future dinner. Start with the nucleus: the person or people you want to invite and build the guest list out from there, a few invites at a time. As guests confirm, lock 'em in. As guests decline, move on to the next people on the list.

Curate the situation: craft your guest list with intention, inviting the guest(s) that most fulfill your purpose first, adding additional guests if necessary as people are unavailable.

5) A bad invite will make someone go "yee naur"

We don’t want the invite to make your guest say "yee naur," we want them to say "naur yee!”

Sometimes invitations are just a text. Sometimes they're physical envelopes in the mail. Regardless, know that the invitation can tip an undecided attendee one way or another.

Why not harness the power of that first moment of contact? Creating an invitation that looks intentional signals to guests, "I've put thought into this." And via the invitation transitive property they'll conclude that you've put thought into the event itself as well.

And you have!

So let's sell that. Let's sell your effort at every moment. Invitations should be imbued with the vibe of intention. Invitations need to convince someone to give up their most valuable resource: time.

My game night invitation.

And you don’t need to spend hours in Photoshop like I did. Here's a fake invite I challenged myself to create in less than 5 minutes:

Took me 5 minutes and it just feels like a THING!

"But Jesse," you say. “I'm not a graphic designer.” Great. Neither am I. I also did this in 5 minutes:

Literally just a photo of Post-It notes.

Imagine receiving this image via text. Immediately you feel like it's a THING. And if you're feeling like this is too much, I also fully believe in the power of a well-worded text that feels personal and intentional:

I think he’ll change his mind.

A text like this can also be used to secure key RSVPs ahead of a more official invitation, so as you expand your invites you can leverage your pitch with who's already in. "Christian and Reichel are in! Let's DO THIS!" Guests like when other awesome guests are already confirmed.

And while we're on the subject of invitations, it should be noted that the moment your invite goes out, your event has started. Too many hosts send an invite and the next moment of contact is the event itself. This is fine, but it's just laying a huge opportunity on the table.

Going out dancing? Create a group chat two days before and show everyone that the HYPE is real! People want to fucking RAGE—even if “rage” is just a few GIFs and some fit checks to pregame inside jokes before we gather in the same physical space. We actually love this shit. And if you’re on the “I hate group chats” bandwagon, loosen the fuck up, turn your notifications off grandma, and let’s have some fucking FUN.

Also, does anyone want to go camping?

Curate the situation: remember that the invite is the first point of contact with a guest—make it feel deliberate. And think about your situation as an opportunity to inject fun from the moment they receive the invite until the last person leaves the party.

6) Walk into your own situation

Before my event starts, I walk outside and stand in front of my apartment complex. I imagine I'm a guest. I walk up to the front door and buzz myself in. I go down the hallway, taking note of anything that might throw a guest off.

Is there a pile of dog shit on the ground?

Is the door buzzer not working?

Is there a pile of human shit on the ground?

I walk into my apartment: what's the first thing I notice? Oh wait, there's no music. And the TV is still on with my YouTube homepage up, undesirably telling everyone just HOW gay my algorithm is. I mean, they know it's gay. But not THAT gay.

I visualize the experience down to the tiniest detail. This level of obsession is what becomes automatic over time and leads to guests going, "He's such a natural." No. I’m not, actually. No one is. People just practice a lot more than we realize, which makes it look natural.

Anyway, I stand there in the entryway and a memory comes to me: oh my God I loved that one time when I was at Jen's family Christmas party and her aunt greeted me at the front door holding a cup of hot chocolate, “Welcome, hot cocoa?”

Holy shit, am I in heaven?

Based on this memory, I open a bottle of champagne and pour myself a glass and stick the remainder of the champagne in a wine bucket. I set out glasses near the front door so it's impossible to miss when you walk in.

So now: my guests arrive at the front door and buzz themselves in. They walk down the hallway and there’s no dookies anywhere. As they get closer to the door they hear the faint beats of Dua Lipa. As the door flies open, Dua’s smooth alto vocals waft into their ears and there I am: greeting them with a glass of champagne as they enter.

Holy shit, are they in heaven?

Curate the situation: simulate the situation from your guests' perspective. Think about the smallest details and make adjustments based on what vibe you want to hit them with the moment they walk in the door.

7) Do something on purpose

So what do you do after you've defined the purpose of your situation, set up some ground rules, and sent an enticing invitation to some incredible guests who have RSVP’d “yes”?

You DO something!

Something specific. With intention.

But what is that thing? To find the answer, we look back at the main filter: your purpose. If I'm hosting a birthday situation with the express mission of looking back on my 20s, then maybe:

• watch THE movie that defined my 20s

• throw a dance party of bangerz that came out during my 20z

• every guest brings 5 of their favorite photos of me during my 20s and we do a storytime slideshow OR

• skip storytime and make it art: have my guests post the photos on a giant poster board as they enter... take a group polaroid and tape that in the center of the board after all the other photos are up omg did I just tear up? 🥹

• it's a costume situation where my guests all dress up as elderly folks, signaling the fact that as I turn 30 I’m basically dead anyway

And depending on how large the situation is, you may want to have multiple things going on in multiple zones. This is what we do with our annual Halloween situation, Dark Corners. Game nights are much smaller, focusing around a single zone: the game table.

Curate the situation: ignore the voice in your head to keep things unstructured and "chill" and have a specific thing happening that supports the purpose of your event. It doesn't have to be elaborate. It just has to be deliberate.

8) Your guests are your co-hosts

The other night at game night I turned to Julia and said, "Can you be in charge of refilling everyone's drinks throughout the night?" Julia's reaction when I said this:

“Woman extremely excited” was the prompt I gave the A.I. generator. To be fair—they nailed it. Julia looked exactly like this.

Think back to a time when you elevated someone else's party. It could have been because the host asked you to help out, or it could have been because you were telling engaging stories, or it could have been because you brought a game that fosters connection for the guests to play (that last one with the hosts permission, of course).

As a host, let me just say—I love when guests take ownership of their own ability to elevate a situation. We're all in this "life" thing together. And all any of us really want is to move through spacetime as a collection of atoms in unison, appearing as a singular organism in complete harmony. Making every moment that passes through us better off because it did.

The other night Zach offered to take out the trash and I almost cried.

Curate the situation: invite guests that have the skill to organically take work off your plate as a host. Or, foster the skill in budding co-hosts and ask them to take on specific tasks throughout the night. Humans love feeling useful.

9) Build in a change of venue

There's something magical about changing venues—especially when it's unexpected. It's similar to being out at a bar and then saying, "this place sucks let's go somewhere else." Well now we've just gone from hanging out to going on an adventure.

And adventures are fun.

One time I hosted game night and at the end, we walked out of my apartment and down the street to an ice cream shop.

It was memorable.

One time I hosted a dance party and at the end, we walked out of my apartment and down the street to a bar.

It was memorable.

And the venue change can be very small. You can even move people from one space in your home to another. I used to do this all the time when we played certain games at game night. I'd play the more physical games (charades) downstairs and then move folks upstairs to my gaming table. And with that simple shift came a tangible, tickle of excitement, "Uh oh! We're headed upstairs." Veteran game night attendees would turn to the newbies, "You've made it. The Upstairs is where serious gaming happens."

Not really. It’s all just games in different areas of my home. But the changing of venues was a bit of theatre.⁷ And the guests felt it. Hell, I felt it. It felt exciting.

It was memorable.

Curate the situation: build in a shift in location at some point that satisfies the purpose of your event, even if the location switch is simply from one space in your home to another.

10) Drop the mic

One of the most memorable finales to a concert was Sam Smith at the Forum in 2023. They performed world-class vocals for over an hour and a half straight, and immediately after the final show-stopping performance of Unholy (complete with a Kim Petras surprise reveal), the dancers took center stage with some incredibly tight choreo and then BOOM

All of the lights shut off.

The crowd went wild.

And about 5 seconds after that... the house lights went up.

No encore.

And guess what? We didn't need one. The mic was dropped at the peak of the concert’s energy. I'll never forget that.

A great chef always knows what the lingering taste in your mouth is when you leave their restaurant. They’ve thought it through. You should know what your guests' lingering vibe is as they walk back to their cars. Think it through.

Our 2024 Dark Corners theme was A.I. mixed with retro computers. I knew I wanted to counter-intuitively end a huge situation in an extremely intimate way. So I sat quietly for a moment and thought… and an image appeared in my mind: all of the guests seated in a huge circle. In the center there’s a trash can—the same trash can as the Trash icon on the Mac. Everyone holds old school floppy disks in their hands and writes things on the disks in Sharpie—“apps” they wanted to "delete" from their “hard drive.” My first example is, “anxiety.exe.” My guests take this concept and run with it, writing outdated apps like, “my_toxic_friendships.pdf” and “imposter syndrom.jpg.” After the discs are tossed into the trash can, I read them aloud.

I brought this vision to life exactly as I had pictured it.

It was cathartic.

It was memorable.

Curate the situation: design the final moments at your situation with intention. Picture how you want it to go in your mind and make it happen. Your guests will carry how they feel in these moments with them as they make their way to their car, on their drive home, and hopefully for days, months, and years to come.

Fundamentals aren’t requirements

You might read through these fundamental philosophies and feel seen. “I do some of these already!” Great! You might read this and think, "This is way too much you psycho." Also great!

Remarkable literally means something that is worth remarking about—and that's what we're aiming for, here. Know that these fundamentals aren't requirements. They're guidelines that can be indulged in on an a la carte basis.

Use what works.

Discard the rest.

And remember, sometimes all we need is just a casual hang.

Comment below with any questions or clarifications you might have regarding hosting a situation. Tell me what roadblocks you've experienced in your own hosting. Or what memorable moments you've created.

1. Maybe that’s why Coca-Cola is a $200 billion company and A Curated Situation isn’t?

2. I say “basically” because while the thesis of her book is centered around defining your event’s purpose, the book contains tons of other brilliant concepts.

3. Truly though, when is that not the case?

4. Although there were a LOT of online Resistance nights. Damn, those were the days 🔴

5. In this example, let's assume my partner isn't available as it's an obvious auto-invite and there's more to learn in a non-obvious scenario.

6. There are now five Kyles in my social circle. So which one am I talking about? Choose your own kyleventure.

7. My boyfriend proofread this document and said if I don’t spell it “theatre” he couldn’t “see a future together.”