Great memories and beautiful moments are the most precious experience everyone lives to encounter. When recreating memories with old friends, you should consider hosting a murder mystery dinner party.
Murder mystery parties guarantee incredible and fun time to any group. Are you looking to have a good time with your friends or family?
Ensure you pick the suitable theme, follow vital planning factors and the perfect venue for everyone to have fun. Murder mystery parties are super easy and fun to host.
Prepare a Guest List
Before hosting any party, you need to prepare a guest list. These may be your family members, old friends, or office colleagues.
You may choose one group from these examples or host three different parties. It is essential to know the kind of guests you’re inviting before planning the actual party.
Choose a Theme
Listing out ideas is a great way to start you off. After knowing who is on your guest list and their interests, you can now pick a theme.
Are they casual and outgoing? What TV shows and movies do they enjoy most? Are they a reserved and professional group? Do they like books or sports?
Having this knowledge helps you determine the common interests of your guests. Use these interests and drop the ones with few characters and maintain the ones with the majority of the characters.
These ideas will give you a direction on what theme to go with that excites you the most.
Pick a Venue to Host the Murder Mystery Dinner Party
Pick a venue that is favorable to your budget. You can either choose to host at your home in the backyard or living room.
Bed & breakfast or a haunted mansion can be great picks if you have a decent budget for hosting the party.
Besides hotel ballroom, city park, private dining area of a restaurant, high school gym, party boat or bus could work fine.
Your venue needs to be as friendly as possible, ensure there are restrooms and ample parking facilities to accommodate your guests.
Assigning Roles to Guests
Assigning characters to guests is the most crucial part of hosting a murder mystery party. Once you have your guest list ready, theme, and venue picked, it’s essential to involve the guests at this point.
It takes the host a significant amount of time to study the characters of the selected murder mystery.
You may either assign guests an opposite and challenging character or match personalities as close as possible.
The host is the only person who has the power to assign roles to the guests. While sending the murder mystery party invitation to your guests, you can notify them of their character information, theme, and costume suggestions.
Invite and Manage Guests RSVPs
You need to send the invitations as early as possible for the murder mystery part to be a bomb. This allows guests to purchase the right costume for the party.
Include RSVPs on the invites to ensure you get the exact number of the guests that will come. Sometimes, a surprise party can be effective and fun too.
You will only need to select fancy dresses or costume suggestions that guests can pick at the party. Customizing the invitation will make your party unique and special.
All you need is the creative eye to ensure the invites are unique and special, just how you like.
Plan Your Menu
Besides the thrill of the game, your guests will stay because of the food. Just like any other party, it is essential to serve your guests some bitings during the party.
The party’s flexibility makes it easier to host one since it is allowed to serve a formal dinner or appetizers the whole time.
Often you will find these parties segmented into rounds. This makes it easier and more fun since you can choose to serve appetizers or cocktails in the first round. You could choose to serve dinner during the second round. And finally, the third round, coffee, and dessert would be incredible.
Murder mystery parties are so flexible you can order the food, outsource to a catering company or prepare the meals yourself. Ensure that the flow of the game is not interrupted by meal preparation.
How to Do a Murder Mystery Party
Murder mystery dinner parties have few and simple rules.
Maintaining Character
This is the first step to ensure the game stays engaging and fun by sticking to your character for the entire time. It’s easier for the guests to stay in character if the host maintains their character.
It is vital for you as the host to keep to your accent, do not drop your costume prop (e.g., wand or cigar). Also, do not forget to address the other guests by their role names.
Food, decor, and costumes are perfect for ensuring guests play their parts. Please note you can introduce a punishment or an incentive to ensure guests maintain their characters.
The incentive or punishment should work if they break the murder mystery rule. For instance, they could take shots of whiskey, put cash in a jar, or wear a funny costume until other guests break the rules.
Follow the Script
This is another important step to ensure your guests are enjoying the game. You should make sure that each guest knows the script and the story of the party.
You need to have shared confidential information and instructions with the guests before the actual day of the party. The host should ensure the guests understand only to share this information and instructions at a certain time to maintain the game’s flow.
The guests should know why it’s important for them to reveal certain information at a specified time.
Have Fun
The third and most vital rule of the game is to have fun. As a host, you need to make sure all the guests in the room are engaged and enjoying the game.
Wrapping it Up
To be fun and engaging as a host, you need to ensure your guests are comfortable and they’re participating in the game with ease.
Make it involving by encouraging even the silent members to ask questions to the other guests if they seem shy.
This is a game of nerves, and it can only be fun and involving if everyone feels comfortable and easy with each guest.
Do you feel like you have a rough idea on hosting a murder mystery party? Feel free to comment on this blog and share this article with your friends.
