How to Plan a Welcome Home Party

Your best friend may have moved across country for a better job or your parents may have relocated to a retirement villa in Florida. Do you have a loved one in the military fighting in a war? Maybe your boyfriend or girlfriend went away to college and you won’t see them until the holidays. We all have moments when absence makes the heart grow fonder. Take that moment to begin to plan a welcome home party for your loved one’s return. They will love you for it!

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

How to Plan a Welcome Home Party

1. Once you have the exact date and time of your loved ones return, begin to make phone calls and send out emails to their family and friends. Try to have the date and time determined. Guests will rearrange their schedules for a welcome home party, especially if the person hasn’t been home in several years.

2. Ask for volunteers. This is a joint effort. Your absent loved one may love his aunt’s yellow pound cakes and his mother’s macaroni salad. Ask certain wonderful cooks to make the favorite dishes of your honored guest. This will be a huge surprise. Recruit a friend or family member to take video or still photos. Capture the once in a lifetime moment.

3. Decide on the location. Have the welcome home party either at your loved one’s home or a very close friend or relative. The purpose is to have them enter a place that they are familiar with. They should feel comfortable.

4. 
    

   Have everyone pitch in for a monetary gift. Buy a nice card and place the money and checks in the card. Have everyone sign the card and present it to the “person of the hour” at the party.

5. Purchase “welcome home” party favors, as well as food and drinks in bulk. Take a day to visit a party store and pick up the favors. Depending on the amount of people attending, you can either shop at your local grocer or a food warehouse store.

Tips & Warnings

• Try to keep the welcome home party a surprise!
• Create a really good music play list.
• Recruit a young relative to perform. They can dance, sing or even present a picture that they drew in school.
• Decide if you are going to have some foods catered along with favorite dishes created by family and friends.
• Remember that you want to make the welcome home party as comfortable as possible. Try to stay away from open invitations. Remind the party goers to only invite one respectable guest. You don’t want the party to be filled with strange, unfamiliar faces.

[cindabjo]

on 7/11/2008 I want to make an adoption welcome home special for my sister, her husband, and their new baby boy. Any suggestions?