simply by hectorir

Parties used to be pretty predictable things. a few drinks, some nibbles, a few music, some fancy clothes. Perhaps a party game or two. After a while, like anything expected, they got boring. therefore thank heavens for themed events – the modern party trend that makes today’s shindig because unique as its host’s creativity.

designed events are to parties what Cecil w DeMille pictures were to darkness puppetry. All-singing, all-dancing, super-lavish affairs in which attention has been paid to the tiniest fine detail. Turning parties into designed events makes them an experience, rather than a simple gathering: imagine, for example , a fully-staged Arthurian corridor, complete with serving ladies, magic, flickering torches and middle ages food. The guests are dressed in doublet and hose; actual mead is being poured through metal flagons. A music group of minstrels plucks the tune in the gallery. Themed events are like miniature performs – evening-long excursions into a fully-realised world.

We modern folk are more attuned to the idea of dream than perhaps we know. movies are hyper-real, with impressive 3D and brain-boggling results effortlessly creating impossible points in front of even the most critical target audience. TV shows create universes in which their watchers happily take that vampires are actual, or spaceships exist capable of catapulting themselves instantaneously in order to far-flung stars. What themed events do is take this modern expectation for dream and apply it to fact. So rather than watching a film in which (say) a twenties ballroom is effortlessly recreated, attendees at themed occasions enter the ballroom itself. People who are invited to themed occasions become part of the story: part of the action – and they keep in mind those stories for a long time.

Themed occasions satisfy a need for escape usually maintained by film and television. Who, after all, wants to proceed stand in a room with a lot of people they know anyhow, have a few drinks, talk about normal things, and go home? Anyone wanting to do that can go to a pub. A party is supposed to be something extraordinary, an escape from the norm. Themed events make parties escapes not just from the run of everyday existence, but from predictability as well: anyone invited to designed events is going to spend as much time wondering what an authentic Arthurian knees-up is going to be such as they are having fun at this when they go.

In an escapist world, events have a lot to live up to. 300 billion dollar movie budgets notwithstanding, themed events are a pretty good attempt.