While a New Year’s wedding isn’t as popular as those booked in the spring and summer seasons, the holiday’s existing air of celebration and promise of the future can make it the perfect time for your nuptials. Check out these few ideas to help make your special day a real sparkler.

Have a Photo Booth
While the professional photographer and attendees with camera phones will capture the event as it happens, New Years Eve nuptials begs for a fun photo booth. With a custom-designed backdrop added to your booth, your guests will have a great time staging their own photos, capturing the joyful moments before and after vows are exchanged and as the ball drops.

Glitter and Gold
The traditional New Year’s decor calls for different shades of sparkling silver and glittering gold. Try and integrate these celebratory touches into your wedding style and design – dresses with gold or silver trim, a sequin wedding dress, sequined table cloths, glitter dipped feathers, gift bags tied with gold ribbon and even invitations on bejeweled stationary.

Champagne, Confetti and Party Favors
No wedding would be complete without a little libation – and certainly no New Year’s Eve party would be memorable without confetti and party favors. Make sure to have plenty of Champagne, confetti and party favors like noisemakers and party horns. In lieu of a cake, a Champagne tower can make a fun, bubbly and adult alternative.

Sparklers
New Year’s Eve is all about the fireworks! If a full-fledged outdoor display isn’t in the cards, handheld sparklers make a great party favor.

Location, Location, Location
A wedding venue tends to come with lots of specifications and restrictions – in addition to a hefty surcharge. Often, they are somewhat remote destinations, outside of major cities or more metropolitan areas. A New Year’s Eve party, on the other hand, can be anywhere you want it to be, provided you have friends and fun! A rooftop with a view of a city skyline, a hotel, or a private manor are great places to ring in the New Year with style and joy.

Turn Vows Into Resolutions
On New Year’s Eve, everyone puts together their resolutions for the year to come, focusing on self-improvement and making the world around them a better place. For your wedding, turn your vows into a series of resolutions – going far beyond the year to come and stretching out to encompass the life you will share together.

Looking for banners or backdrops for your New Year’s Eve-themed wedding? Sign Art Etc can help! Contact us today to learn more.

Event planners helping to mastermind a corporate holiday party should keep social channels in mind. Documenting the event with cleverly filtered Instagram photos and witty tweets offers numerous possibilities: the chance to not only increase brand awareness for potential customers, but also showcase a company’s culture and aid recruitment efforts if it’s hiring.

So you’ll want to ensure your party is a grand time worthy of the record books and one that benefits the company’s long-term bottom line. Every decision you make, from choice of venue to the custom party backdrop you use to add visual flair, can play a part in the event’s success. Check out these ideas:

It all starts with theme
“Theme” isn’t just something you had to explain regarding “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” in sixth-grade book reports: In event planning, it informs every aspect of a party. Choosing a corny theme (like “tropical winter wonderland” – come on, you know your mind went there) is a social media death sentence and might bore attendees to tears. But something overly specific or (goodness forbid) controversial is asking for trouble of a different variety.

Now here’s one theme choice highly worth considering: a speakeasy. As Australian culture blog Junkee explained, the combined vibes of Roaring Twenties excess and Prohibition secrecy make for an elegant affair with just a slight vibe of illicit secrecy: There’s nothing truly risque, but elements like classic cocktails, cool big-band jazz (via DJ or live if you can afford it) and bold fashions can persuade people to have fun without getting too rowdy.

A festive visual experience
The party’s theme, once decided upon, helps determine the choice of venue as well as the design attributes necessary to visually communicate that theme, according to BG Events. For example, you couldn’t use just a private function room of an upscale restaurant for a spectacle-dependent theme like “Awards Night” – you’d want a hotel’s banquet facility.

Similarly, an holiday party thematic choice like that can benefit greatly by incorporating artistic elements that simulate the red carpet event atmosphere of glitz and glamour. Something like a custom backdrop branded with the client’s corporate logo kills two birds with one stone: It lets you set up a photo-booth attraction, which is always a hit among jubilant employees, and the resulting images will look fantastic on the company’s social channels. And furthermore, it helps bolster the awards-show illusion. Plus, a custom banner can work with almost any theme.

Don’t forget about decorum
Technically, it’s not the responsibility of event planners or staff to stop party attendees from embarrassing themselves. But you can help keep things together by recommending some guidelines – especially if you stress the power of social media visibility to the client.

Limiting either the number or variety of alcoholic drinks consumed can work wonders, Forbes noted. It may also be wise to have event staff rather than the company handle the photography so no inappropriate photos are taken, let alone posted to Instagram. This step will also help ensure that the photos distributed are high-quality and reflective of the good taste the client wants to display.

The bridal shower is a fun opportunity to celebrate the bride-to-be and “shower” her with gifts for her and her groom’s new life together. Check out these ideas on hosting a memorable shower including a personalized backdrop for photos, food, games and more.

If the bride has any input, make sure to follow her directions. However, remember that you’re the one planning and hosting this party—the bride should just relax and enjoy herself. In some cases, the bridal shower takes place on the same day or weekend of the bachelorette party. This is perfectly acceptable, and it can be a good idea if a lot of the bridesmaids are flying in from out of town. Generally the shower is held at the host’s home, but you can also use a restaurant, banquet hall, or a relative’s house.

Guests
Send invitations out at least four to six weeks before the event. Ask the bride for her wedding guest list. If the shower is supposed to be a surprise, get the guest list from the bride’s mother or her fiance. Generally, you shouldn’t invite people who are not getting invited to the wedding, unless it’s a destination wedding or very small. These are the wedding guests who are typically invited to the bridal shower:

• Any women in the bridal party.
• All close female friends and family members of the bride and groom.
• If it’s a “Jack and Jill” shower, you can also invite the groom to help out.

Gifts
Guests traditionally bring gifts to the bridal shower, from the couple’s registry. The host or maid of honor should take note of who brought each gift so the bride can remember.

Are you hosting a bridal shower? Follow this guide to show the bride-to-be a wonderful day.

Photos and Decorations
There will be lots of photo opportunities during the bridal shower. One great idea to add to the atmosphere is to create a custom backdrop with her name. She can open presents in front of the backdrop and it will make the pictures even more memorable. You can also incorporate the wedding theme into the custom design, or something fun about the bride’s personality.

SignArtEtc has a variety of vinyl backdrops that can be customized for your event, with free layout services and fast turnaround.

One cute way to decorate for the party is to display pictures of the happy couple together throughout the home or party space. You can also include pictures of the bride with her best friends and family, and some cute pictures of her as a kid.

Food and Drinks
Guests will be expecting food, even if it’s just appetizers to nibble on. Taste of Home has some great ideas for wedding shower foods such as bride and groom cupcakes, pasta salad, Mediterranean dip and finger sandwiches. You can also customize snacks by monogramming cookies and cupcakes with the bride’s initials.

Martha Stewart Weddings has a great guide to refreshing cocktails perfect for a bridal shower, complete with recipes. The list includes grapefruit and mint Mojitos, champagne cocktails, or flavored sangria. Non-alcoholic options include pink lemonade, pomegranate soda or flavored ice tea. Keep drinks light and refreshing. If the bride has a favorite drink, you can serve that.

Activities
The bridal shower itinerary can be as simple as 1. Chat, 2. Eat, 3. Open gifts. Many also use this as an opportunity to play some fun games and ice breakers. Rachel Torgerson of The Knot has a list of the ultimate bridal shower games to give you some ideas. Favorites include The Newlywed Game, where the bride answers trivia questions about her groom and their answers are compared, and Wedding Movie Charades, where guests act out famous scenes from wedding movies without speaking.

Halloween is a perfect holiday for the young and young at heart – but sometimes, it can be challenging for kids who scare easily. While you may want to break out your most ghoulish and gruesome costumes and decor, this can often leave more sensitive youngsters feeling frightened. To create an event that is fun and not so scary so as to upset young children, here are a few party ideas:

Make Photo Memories with a Backdrop
One great idea is to create spooky, but non-threatening Halloween backdrops that kids can have their pictures taken in front of. By giving them the chance to have their picture taken, they can look back fondly and without fear, on all their holiday memories! One fun pre-party activity could be to have your kids design the backdrop themselves with less-than-scary monsters of their own creation!

SignArtEtc has a variety of banners and backdrops that can be custom-designed with your Halloween graphics. Our team of professional designers will do the layout at no extra cost – just send us your images and we’ll do the rest! Visit our online store to learn more.

Decorate with seasonal flair
Rather than going with party decor that involves spider webs, blood or other violent or frightening images, try playing up more seasonal aspects of the holiday. Scatter dried red, yellow and orange leaves around the party area and feature pumpkins, apples and hay. Balloons in Halloween colors of orange, red or black are also a great addition, as with more abstract decorations like witch hats, black cat cutouts and tissue-paper ghosts.

If you do want to evoke slightly scary, monster-themed imagery, opt for more cartoonish depictions where the monsters are smiling and friendly, making them more cuddly than terrifying.

Avoid ‘scary’ costumes and party games
When throwing a party with kids in mind, it’s OK to ask guests to avoid coming dressed in gory or fearsome costumes. Choosing a theme for your party can help attendees come up with less frightening alternatives to a scary costume. Instead of ghouls or monsters, why not have your guests come in antiquated garb or dressed as historical figures? For kids’ costumes, princesses, princes, superheroes and other popular culture figures can be an excellent alternative. At the end of the night, you can hold a costume contest and announce winners for various categories.

While party games like reaching into a bowl of peeled grapes may have been staples of a different era of childhood, there are plenty of other fun activities that don’t rely on scares. Here are a few alternatives:

• Beanbag toss or cornhole
• Pin the tail (or nose) on the pumpkin
• Bobbing for apples
• “Witch pitch” – a game where players try and throw candy corn into mini plastic witch cauldrons
• Getting a Halloween-themed piñata

Pumpkin carving is a fun, not-so-scary Halloween party activity.

Halloween crafts
Keeping kids occupied at a party is crucial, and arts and crafts are a great way to get them focused and having fun. A few Halloween-themed crafts that you can feature at your next party include:

• Supervised pumpkin carving – or painting for younger kids
• Making apple stamps
• Putting together “fall wreaths” with dried sticks and leaves
• Folding and cutting colored paper to create spider webs

Not-so-scary treats
While packaged candy is the traditional Halloween party favor, there are ways you can spice things up with handmade treats or healthier alternatives. Instead of handing out candy, why not offer:

• Roasted pumpkin seeds
• Sliced apples and strawberries to dip in caramel or chocolate sauce
• Fruit skewers decorated to look like goofy bugs or aliens
• Prepare your favorite fruit punch, but add green food coloring and a touch of dried ice to turn it into a witches brew
• Put together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches using a bagel as bread, then stick on googly eyes and plastic vampire fangs in the bagel hole

Another fun, interactive treat for kids is having them assemble bagel or English muffin pizzas. Provide the pre-cut bagels or English muffins as well as chopped veggies, pepperoni, shredded cheese or other toppings and encourage the kids to make monster faces. Bake the pizzas and let the children eat the monster face they designed. How could that be scary?

For all of your holiday party sign and backdrop needs, contact Sign Art Etc. It would be a pleasure to hear from you.