Movie Party - Party Video to Watch Finale

My brother is a huge movie fan. He knows all sorts of trivia and he loves watching movies as well. For his birthday, we will be having a movie party.

We will have guests from a wide range of ages, but mostly teenagers, and some of our guests have special needs. Given their ages, we didn't want to do anything too childish, so here is what we came up with.

Invitations: I love the movie ticket idea, but I was afraid that some of the older teens would think it was too childish, so we made flyer style invitations w/ clipboard, popcorn, and movie reel graphics. On the clipboard, I inserted M(name)'s Movie Party where the movie title should go. The rest of the invite had standard party information surrounded by a red and yellow border.

Decorations: The front porch will have red carpet (red tablecloth) leading to the door. We will hang silver stars with each guests name from the ceiling of the porch with red ribbon.  Inside, we will hang some movie posters on the wall. We will make a red curtain around our TV with red streamers. Both our dining room and kitchen tables will be covered w/ red tablecloths and star confetti.

In the dining room, each place will be set w/ movie themed tableware. The centerpiece is a clipboard that I made out of cardboard, painted black, and used a white out pen to draw the lines and M's Movie Party. I drew this on both sides so everyone can see it.

Activities:

1. When the guests first arrive, they can snack on munchies, which include various Doritos (birthday boy's favorite), star shaped cookies that I will ice yellow, and fruit w/ peanut butter and yogurt dips. As they are munching and waiting for other guests to arrive, my fiance and my father will take turns videotaping them as they give messages to the birthday boy, tell jokes, or sing along to the music. The music will be a play list of the birthday boy's favorite songs.

2. Once everyone arrives and the pizza is delivered, they will eat dinner in the dining room while my mom and I set up the table in the kitchen for our next activity.

3. We didn't want to do crafts or anything too childish, but we need more video footage other than the guests just watching a movie. So, we are creating a make your own popcorn station. Out of a kids cookbook, we found recipes for flavoring popcorn with cheese, peanut butter, or chocolate. So everyone will make popcorn and put it into those red and white striped popcorn bags.

4. Next we will go into the living room and they can choose a movie to watch.

5. After the movie, we will go back into the dining room for cake. The cake is a white sheet cake that I will ice red with homemade frosting. On top, I'll put a yellow star sugar cookie w/ a laminated picture of my brother in the middle. This works out well because my brother prefers cookies over cake and he only eats the icing off the cake. So now he will get a cookie w/ cake icing on the back! My mom will also prepare coke or dr. pepper floats for anyone who wants one.

6. Next, my brother will open his presents while my fiance hooks the video camera up to our TV and adds some finishing touches to our grand finale.

7. After presents, we will gather in the living room to watch the video footage from the party.

Before the party we will get a shot of a black piece of paper w/ M's Movie Party on it. Then we will play the footage of the party (no time for editing, but we plan on editing it and putting it to music later). At the end of the footage, we will get a shot of another piece of paper that has the closing credits w/ all of the guests names. (later, we will make real rolling credits)

Since some of the guests have special needs, a few parents will stay. We will have a penne pasta dish and salad for them in addition to the other food. We will have a movie trivia quiz for them to do in case they don't like the movie.

Favors: At the end of the night everyone (parents too) gets a chocolate bar  with a Thank you for coming to M's Movie Party on a homemade label. My brother's friends will also get a $5 gift card to Hollywood video.

Thank yous: We will put a copy of the edited movie w/ music and credits on a DVD. The label will say M's Movie Party 2007 on it.