When are the best times to throw a party?

After 10 years in the event entertainment industry, we have a pretty good idea as to which weekends are best and worst for throwing events. Our office team actually keeps track of the busiest event weekends of the year (or, at least the busiest for CT, RI, MA, and NH) to help our clients pick make great choices when picking a day to throw their party.

Here are a few general rules:

1. Friday Nights are always best.
   Very few people throw Friday Night events, but even birthday parties can be better suited
2. Saturdays are always busier than Sundays.
   A lot of families think about doing Saturday parties instead of Sundays, likely to keep from interfering with worship services. BUT we’ve found Saturdays are on average 5x busier than Sundays as far as parties go. Meaning, you’re much more likely to be competing with other events and on-goings if you throw your party on a Saturday rather than a Sunday afternoon.
3. Avoid “peak” hours.
   The busiest times of day for people to throw parties are Saturdays 11am-4pm and Sundays 12-3pm. If you can avoid these two peak times, you’ll be in good shape. Go early and serve brunch, or wait until the evening to ensure your guests won’t have to set alarm clocks.
4. Don’t rule out federal holiday weekends
   While some families go away for long weekends, almost no one throws parties on those weekends. Especially if you’re throwing a marketing or business event, this is when your clients don’t have other existing plans.
5. Don’t do the weekend AFTER federal holiday weekends.The weekends AFTER three-day weekends are jam-packed with errands, pushed-back parties, and nearly everything else you can imagine that got pushed back a week. These are ALWAYS our busiest weekends of the year.
6. We sell out of entertainment certain weekends every year.
   Kaleidoscope’s most-certainly-will-sell-out weekends of every year are –
   1. Last weekend in May
   2. First two weekends in June
   3. The weekend after the 4th of July
   4. Middle two weekends in September
   5. Second weekend of December

Tips for booking party entertainment during the busiest months:

• May-September are SLAMMED for party entertainers, with April, October, and December also being busy
• To make sure you get exactly the package you want, we suggest booking at least one month in advanced for busy months
• For any time of year, we suggest booking a minimum of two weeks before your party.
• Specialty packages, such as toddler-package-cartoon-characters or face-painting-balloon-twisting-combo-princesses generally sell out 3 weeks in advanced at any time of year
• Make sure when you book your party entertainers you ask them these 15 questions.
• Make sure to look for the never-cancel guarantee badge, or ask what your entertainer’s cancelation policy is if they have an emergency!

Categories: Party Planning Help