My oh my. What a weekend! My husband and I hosted a party at our house for his squadron on Saturday night. We always like to make things interesting and entertaining so we decided to host a Murder Mystery party for our 39 guests. Never been to a Murder Mystery party? More details on how it works in a minute...
The theme of our Murder Mystery party was a Class of '85 High School Reunion. Everyone had to dress like their character would have in the 80s. Wow, talk about some, like, totally awesome costumes! The women pulled out all the classics including jelly bracelets, leggings, shoulder pads, and cans of Aquanet hairspray to tease their hair. (Ah, the good 'ol days.) Not to be outdone, the men donned layered shirts, Miami Vice suits, acid washed jeans, and rat tails. Hillarious! And, if the costume reminiscing wasn't enough, the 80s background music was the icing on the cake.
I digress. Since the theme was a high school reunion, all of the guests had to "register" as soon as they walked in the door. So, I set up my Lifetime 4'x2' table as a registration table. It was the perfect size because it was just about the same width as our entry hallway. I simply threw a white sheet over the table and hung a "Welcome Back" Banner around it for decoration. It worked great because after everyone arrived, I was able to quickly fold it up and move the Lifetime table out of the way so people could walk through the hallway to mingle with guests.
Now, back to the party details. Here's how a Murder Mystery party works in a nutshell. Prior to the party, the host assigns each guest a character. (For our high school reunion party, we had typical classmate characters like the Class President, The Jock, The Cheerleader, The Prom King/Queen, The Drama Queen, The Valedictorian, The Punk, The Math Team Captain etc.) When you send out the invitations, you give every guest their character assignment and a brief character description. When guests arrive at the party, you hand them an envelope with objectives they need to complete which all become possible motives for the murder. Sometime during the party, a murder of one guest will take place. (We planned our murder to take place during the reunion dance in our garage ...complete with an 80s breakdance contest! So fun!). After the murder, guests receive another envelope with more objectives to complete and evidence to share...if they choose. People are also given fake money to bribe/blackmail people to gain evidence and information. After an evidence presentation, guests fill out a form and guess "who dunnit". And, they also vote for Best Dressed and Best Performer of the night.
If you want to host a memorable event, I would highly recommend a Murder Mystery party. You can purchase games online for groups of different sizes ranging from 15-100+ people. (We used www.nightofmystery.com ) The games include everything you need to plan the party and run the game, including the invitations. Oh, and as the host, you can play along without knowing "who dunnit". Give it a try...trust me, your guests will be talking about the night long after the party is over!