WARNING: HUGEMONGOUS POST!
I can't believe I haven't made a post about this yet, but here's the post about my actual 17th birthday party. It was pretty crazy awesome. We pretty much took every Harry Potter themed party and mixed them all together to create the ultimate Harry Potter party (i sure am humble, aren't i)
The planning took months, so if you want to have one like ours, I suggest starting right. Now. My mom also works at a print shop, which made this 99.9% easier, so if you don't have the luxury of a print shop nearby, this will be kind of difficult.
We spent at least $100 altogether, but in lots of small chunks.
Invitations
Okay, so having a Harry Potter party, the invitations pretty much HAVE to be Hogwarts acceptance letters. So that's what we did.
We took the words from the letter in SS, then altered it a little to make it fit on a small piece of paper and to make it fit the party. The banner was made by me on Photoshop. I simply took a picture I liked off of Google and traced over it to make it transparent. We made all of it in black and white, but in the book it says it's in green ink (or purple. I can't remember), so if you want to be that accurate, go ahead.
We also Googled McGonagall's signature. I found two versions; A thin one and a thick one, which is the one I used. I wish I had used the thinner version though. It wouldn't have looked so pixelly.
I ended up forgetting to add everything about the party in the letter, so we had to make little card things to tell about the party.
And just for fun, we put little business card sized Platform 9 3/4 tickets in it. We found the image online.
For the envelopes, we printed the girls' names onto it, along with the address that was on Harry's envelope.
Lastly, we Googled "Hogwarts wax seal" and made a 8.5x11 sheet of transparent stickers for the seals.
These letters went over just as well as the party did.
Decorations
The decorations were the most extensive part of the whole party.
We had the house crests on banners up on the fireplace that we printed out on 11x17 glossy paper. We found the images on Google by searching "Hogwarts banner", "Gryffindor Banner", etc.
Since we don't have a fire and were planning to watch the movies after the party, we just put one of our TVs in the fireplace. We were also thinking of making a fake fire with Sirius's face in it, like in GoF.
We bought tall white and yellow candles from Walmart and Dollar Tree, then cut them in half, then cut part of the candle off of the 2nd half of the candleso the wick was showing. We then lit the candle and let it melt and drip, moving the candle around and putting it to the other candles to make it more melty and even. After we did this to all the candles, we got fish string and tied them around each candle, then poked them into the ceiling with flat white thumb tacks. We bought around 20 packs with 2 candles in each for our room. I also liked the yellowed candles more than the white ones, because they looked more Harry Potter-esque.
I also found this online and decided to make a bunch of these to put up around the room:
We borrowed a few picnic tables from some friends and had one ourselves, so we had 4 tables. One for each house. We went to Dollar Tree, where they had perfect brown wrapping paper, then just wrapped the tables with this, to make it look like wood. We printed out 11x17 crests for each house, so that the girls would know which table to sit at.
Dollar Tree also had some great goblets and plates, which we got for the girls to drink and eat from.
My friend was nice enough to lend me an old Harry Potter Calender she had, so we could use the pages for decorations around the room.
Over against the wall, we had a shelf with Harry Potter trinkets we've collected over the years, along with the House Cup. We bought a yellow plastic cup, then taped a small Hogwarts crest on the front. We filled it with little candies they mention in the book like Licorice whips (twizzlers), Gummy worms (Ron eats them, but I can't remember what they're called in the book), candy rings (for the Horcrux) and fake mustaches for fun. The house cup was the prize for the house that won the most games.
We also had a snack table (Hogsmeade). Next to Hogsmeade was the Sorting Hat on its chair. I was going to make this, but then I decided that I wanted to buy it instead. I bought it for around $20 on Amazon, but there are several tutorials on the internet that shows you how to make one.
Here was Diagon Alley. This really was all decoration, except for the wands. We had a cauldron from Halloween that we put there and ended up putting an extra Hedwig balloon in it. We set up our Harry Potter books all pretty and set the wands up in some mason jars.
We had some signs that directed everyone to the "Chamber of Secrets" (the bathroom), where we had a little screenshot from CoS on the wall above the toilet.
My mom also printed out a transparent picture of Moaning Myrtle to put on the mirror.
I didn't get a picture of it, but in front of the door, we had the Platform 9 3/4 sign taped above the door. We found the image online, then printed it out on two pieces of paper. It was about 17 inches wide. We also had an owl balloon taped to the mailbox to help people find our house. In the entrance room, we had a black sheet hung up so that the girls couldn't see the room while we waited for everyone to show up. We also had signs up on the corner, which you can see in the picture. They say, "Hogsmeade", "Chamber of Secrets" and "Hogwarts".
Party Favors
Sadly, I didn't get a picture of the actual bags, but we got paper lunch bags and taped a tiny Honeydukes logo out on the front. We printed it out black and white onto pink paper, then colored in the white and green parts, to make it cheaper. We also wrote the girls' names on the back, because there was a bag for each girl. We put some shredded butcher paper in most of the bags, then ran out and had to use some of the leftover wrapping paper from the tables, shredded up.
Inside the bag, we had a chocolate frog box, which we found a template for on Google, then printed it out in black and white onto purple paper. We had to edit the template we had on Photoshop a little to make it look good on the paper. We colored in the yellow parts, then taped it together. We bought a frog mold off of Amazon for around $5 and made the chocolate frog out of almond bark and rice krispies. They tasted just like Crunch bars. My mom took them to her work and had them all shrink wrapped loosely, so they wouldn't melt. For the cards, we Googled a card template and Photoshopped a picture of each girl into the cards, then put them in the top. We also made a few of the actual Harry Potter characters to stick in there too. We were going to make them double sided, but decided it would be too expensive.
We also found a template for a Marauder's Map which I sadly can't find a picture of, but here is the link to what we used: http://www.britta.com/hogwarts/year6/prep/map/MapWithInstructions.pdf
We made little bookmarks that looked like house scarves. We made it so that it was the scarf of their house.
I also made small red drawstring bags with gold strings, then got iron-on transfer paper and made a Bertie-Bott's logo on Photoshop from an image on Google to print and iron onto the bags. We filled them with the off-brand of Jelly-bellies.
(the white ones weren't finished yet) A party favor we didn't put in the bags was a wand. We had the girls pick a wand before they were sorted. We made them out of wooden dowels, hot glue and tape. My mom was AWESOME and sanded all 20 of them to look rounded and wand-like, then taped handles on and hot glued designs into every one of them, even if she burnt herself a LOT. She also painted them and even made wands that looked like the characters' wands. She is awesome.
I don't know why we don't have a picture of our Elder Wand, but we have one, and it's awesome. I'll take a picture of it later, since no one picked it. (seriously, girls, why did you not pick that one)
Food
We had a LOT of food. Like, a lot. First of all, we had the snack table, which just had chips, veggies and water. But at the tables, we had Cream soda which we replaced the labels with "Butterbeer". We only needed one for each table, but for some reason, it was a serious battle looking for cream soda. About an hour before the party, we put them in the freezer to make them slushy and cold, then put the labels on just before the party. We were going to use a label that we found online, but my mom changed her mind at the last minute and made one. I think I like this one better anyway!
Also on the tables were small boxes of Bertie-Bott's Every Flavour Beans, which we found the template for online. We had two for each table and filled them with about a cup full of jelly beans.
For the dinner, we just had some of my mom's homemade pizza, which was really good, of course. (my mom is a master pizza cook)
For the cake, my awesome friend made me this cake. I sadly can't find a link to it, but we found the idea online and while it fell apart easily, it was very good and looked totally awesome.
The party
When the girls arrived, we had them come into the "Great Hall" where the Sorting Hat was and let them take a gander at the decorations. Then we had them sit down one by one, wear the Sorting hat and get sorted into their houses. I sorted them into the house I thought they'd be in, and also sorted so that there was an even amount of girls at each table. I printed out each name on a piece of paper with the house crest above their name.
This is me. I was in Slytherin and I was dressed up as Draco Malfoy
As you can see, some of the girls were very excited.
After we all got sorted, we ate dinner, then started playing games. First game we played was trivia, which Hufflepuff won. We did a Wizard Duel version of Rock Paper Scissors. Instead of Rock, Paper, Scissors, we stood across from someone and yelled Expelliarmus, Flipendo or Stupify. Expelliarmus beats Stupify, Stupify beats Flipendo and Flipendo beats Expelliarmus. We had two people come up at a time and battle until we got to the last two girls who battled and Slytherin came out the victor. (I think. I'm super tired right now)
Then after that, we played pin the wand on Harry.
Hufflepuff also won this, and the girls wanted to eat cake and open presents, so we declared Hufflepuff the winners.
We handed out party favors after that and watched the movies, while playing Rita Skeeter Rumors, which is basically Telephone, but the person that starts it has to wear silly glasses.
Here are all the pictures we made. You are allowed to use them, but don't claim them as your own.
My mom also printed out some Dark mark transparent stickers for my arm. You can find those online.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask! I'm hoping to plan another party, only Avatar: The Last Airbender themed. :D
