Themes make life easier. A theme is essentially an overall concept or idea of an event. Having a theme structures the event, inspires guests, and also helps reiterate the main takeaways. It’s a tragedy that themes’ aren’t utilized more in planning an event. For whatever reason, they are overlooked due to the idea of planning a themed event is “hard,” it requires more money, it’s “tacky”. I am here to tell you that having a strong theme to standalone or repeating events makes it easier to plan, consistent to publicize, and easy to tweak. For the attendees, it adds a level of connection, especially if it is something they deeply care about and makes it an educational experience for people who may not know much about the theme topic.
A large part of our Simply Prepared advice is about making events fun, enjoyable, and beneficial for the planners as well! It shouldn’t be “just work” for you. Note that there will be some events you will have to do that aren’t necessarily up your alley but that is just the nature of the job — don’t take it too personally.
Now let’s talk about the themes. You can choose to either go all out with your theme in terms of decoration, food, music/media watch, activity, etc. Halloween, for example — is an intense theme. There are very traditional decorations, foods, music, dress codes that come with planning a Halloween event. Late – study night in the basement is a less-intense theme, that might require you to prep for light snacking, really soft music, and proper arrangement of furniture for a relaxing study area and a more intense study area.
Whatever you choose depends on your interests, time/effort bandwidths, demographics, and budgets. Between us at Simply Prepared and our friends/colleagues, we have successfully executed many themed standalone and repeatable events. Read on to see how we planned these events and how you can create similar ones for yourselves and your communities.
Standalone
- Galaxy party
- Halloween party (coming soon)
- Lunar New Year (coming soon)
- Diwali Night (coming soon)
- Bring back a little home (cultural potluck) (coming soon)
Repeatable
- Knitting
- Anime + Ghibli nights
- Chai and Chat (coming soon
- Study Jams (coming soon)
Simply Prepared 