12 New Years Eve Party Ideas to WOW Your Guests
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How are you counting down to the new year this year? If you’re hosting a gathering, you may be looking for New Year’s Eve party ideas. We’ve got you covered. No matter what your guests are into, you’re sure to find the perfect New Years party theme and ideas on our list.

12 New Year’s Eve Party Ideas to WOW Your Guests

1. Midnight Masquerade Theme

Here’s a great idea for a NYE party theme: midnight masquerade. You can have all of your guests dress up in their finest and wear a masquerade mask.

Encourage them to be over the top and have everyone keep their masks on until midnight.

Here are some ideas for your masquerade party:

  • Set up craft-your-own mask station
  • Have a bubbly bar with champagne or a whiskey bar
  • Decorate with gold and white paper lanterns
  • Set up a photo booth and get fun props to capture the night’s memories

2. Gatsby Theme

One of the best New Years Eve party ideas is to have a Gatsby theme. Girls can wear flapper dresses – this one even comes with all of the accessories you need to make it true Gatsby attire.

Guys can wear suits.

A Gatsby theme will transform your party into a glamorous event. But the attire is just one piece of the puzzle.

Here are some ideas for your Gatsby party:

3. NYE Disco Theme

Here’s a fun New Years party theme that will have your guests dancing the night away. Make sure that you put together a killer playlist of all your dance faves. If you want your guests to move all night long, make sure there’s plenty of food.

Here are some other ideas to make your party memorable:

4. Star – Gold – Black Party Theme

The star, gold and black theme is one of the most popular New Years Eve party ideas. They’re classic New Year’s colors and symbols, so they’re the perfect choice for your party.

Don’t forget to serve champagne and hand out streamers to everyone to celebrate when the clock strikes 12.

5. Roaring 20s

The roaring 20s is still a great theme for a NYE party. Everyone can get dressed up for the occasion – girls in flapper dresses and guys in suits.

Hand out party hats and streamers, and hang tinsel foil fringe curtains to make your space more glamorous. Ostrich feathers will make the perfect centerpiece for your table.

6. Murder Mystery Party Game

One of the classic New Years Eve party ideas that I wish people would use more often is to have a murder mystery game. You can use a ton of props for this one, including candles and even a fake skull.

You can buy a game like this one to play if you like, but you can also make up your own.

Candle-lit interiors (remember to be safe) will create the perfect ambiance for this game. You can offer up some wine, spooky music and random sounds to make people jump out of their chairs.

You’ll find plenty of:

  • Kits online that you can use for your murder mystery
  • Free murder games that you can play

If you plan on hosting a group of adults, you’ll love this game. It’s a fun, intellectual game that will keep your guests entertained for hours.

7. Reflection Questions Game

Reflecting on the past year is something that everyone should do because, let’s face it:

  • You missed a few of the goals that you put in place
  • You surpassed a ton of goals
  • You’ve grown as a person and learned a lot

You can use these free printables and print them out for your guests. The goal of this type of game is to have questions that you can ask and reflect on. For example, someone may pick up a question that says:

  1. What is the best advice that you heard this year?
  2. What is the funniest memory that you have of the last year?

If you have a group of friends who have known each other forever, they’ll be sure to love this game just as much as someone who you just met. You can really get to know each other by playing a game like this.

Of course, you can even make up your own questions if you want to make them funnier or lewd.

8. New Year’s Resolution Banner

Everyone – or almost everyone – has a resolution or two that they go into the New Year with and want to achieve. You may or may not actually keep these resolutions, but one trick that helps is to write them down.

Even business leaders say that when you write down your goals, you’ll be more likely to reach them.

Why not have an awesome resolution banner where everyone can add their own resolution to and share it with guests? You have a lot of opportunities here and can choose to even make a game out of it, such as:

  • Guess whose resolution this one is!
  • Vote! Who has the best resolution?

If you want to take it a step further, you can always make copies of the banner or send digital copies of them to all guests. Next year when you have resolutions, you can always pull out last year’s banner and see who reached their goals and who seemingly forgot about them.

9. Speakeasy Party

A New Years party theme that will help you feel like you stepped back into the time of the prohibition. Speakeasies were where people would go to buy alcohol and acted as a bar during the prohibition era.

Since these were illegal establishments, they were well hidden from the law and often required a certain password or code to enter.

You can recreate this same idea with:

Recreating the feel of one of these parties will require you to take your music tastes back to the period between 1920 and 1933 when alcohol was not permitted.

10. Play Minute to Win It Games

Games are memorable and will help make every guest laugh. If you want to have a night that no one will forget, you should have a few games to play. You have so many options here because you may like certain games that others don’t even know exist yet.

But that’s the fun part.

You can teach others how to play and even have some games taught to you. Minute to Win It games are all the rage this year.

The concept?

  • Players or teams face each other
  • You have one minute to win it

For example, you can have mom and dad square off against each other for one minute in a challenge to draw the family dog. You can also do the same with feats of strength (who can finish the most pushups?) or who can complete the most baskets in a set amount of time.

Have fun with the minute you have and get creative.

11. Set Out a Dessert Charcuterie Board

Charcuterie boards are my weakness – really. I can’t get enough of them when they have crackers, meats, cheeses and olives. But why not change it up a bit? You can make your own dessert charcuterie board with:

  • Chocolate covered pretzels
  • Ferrero Rocher candies
  • Chocolates of any kind

You can make your dessert board as sinfully delicious as you like to ring in the New Year. Add in any candies that you like. Even if you’re not a big fan of chocolate, you’re sure to have some delicious treats that you can add to this board, too.

Related: 21 Best Finger Food Ideas to Serve at Your Next Party

12. Serve Festive Cocktails

What’s one of the New Years Eve party ideas that people absolutely love? Festive cocktails. People love to drink cocktails, and it’s up at the top of the list along with champagne as the most consumed drink at this time of year.

You can make this as festive or relaxed as you like.

And if you see the list below and think, “well, champagne isn’t for me,” you can swap it out for white wine or any other drink that you like. A few of the cocktails that you’ll want to consider adding to your list this year are:

  • Raspberry mimosa
  • Cotton candy champagne
  • Vanilla cranberry mimosa
  • Blood orange champagne
  • Rum berry cocktail

Sit down and make up your own list of great drinks that you’ll want to offer at your party.

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