Coming into the new year, I made a conscious decision to focus on throwing smaller, more intimate gatherings. I strongly believe that friendship and self-love should be celebrated just as much as romantic love, so I just couldn’t help but go all out. Not sure where to start? Let me walk you through my planning process.

There are five main points to planning a successful and memorable party… 

1. Invitations
2. Decorations
3. Food
4. Drink
5. Activity

Invites

The first thing you’ll need to do is send out invitations. I made this one on Canva.

If you’ve never heard of Canva you should check it out, I use it for practically every graphic I make. They have a lot of different templates and options available completely for free. I chose this Valentine’s template that I thought was cute and edited the words, fonts, and graphics until I settled on something I liked. You don’t have to be a graphic designer to make a professional looking digital invite! It only took me about 10 minutes to put this one together because Canva is so user-friendly!

Decorations

Decorations, decorations, decorations… You can’t have a banging party without decorations! This year I decided to stick to the classic pink and red Valentine’s theme, so it was pretty easy to find decorations.

I loaded the couch with pillows and blankets to make it really cozy and achieve that girl’s movie-night vibe I was going for. I got these heart shaped balloons on Amazon, as well as the XO balloons and the lip balloons–I used balloon dots to stick them to the wall to create a cool backdrop moment. The really great thing about these foil balloons is that they’re reusable! The lip balloons were actually used at my Galentine’s party a couple years ago.

In the kitchen I hung up a tassel garland, banner, and some hearts. You really don’t need to overdo it with decorations. Just a few in the right places will make the space warmer and much more inviting. 

Food

Is Galentine’s actually Galentine’s without a charcuterie board? I use my giant round serving tray for nearly all my parties. We gathered a bunch of different cute valentines themed snacks that were available in-store. I was really impressed by the variety of options this year. I realized there were a lot of sweets on the board so we balanced them out with savory meats and cheeses.

I also gave each of my guests personalized boxes (used my Cricut, of course!) with their favorite bags of candy, set up my chocolate fountain and prepared strawberries and marshmallows. 

But I felt like we needed an entree as well. Our main course was a chicken and waffles bar, with all the fixings and toppings you can imagine. The waffles were made with a heart shaped waffle iron, We had the chicken delivered from a local restaurant. It was SO GOOD! 

Drinks

Not all of my friends drink alcohol, so I made sure to prepare both alcoholic and non-alcoholic options so that everyone was included.

Cupid’s punch was a tasty non-alcoholic option, and the Strawberry Bailey’s shots with the chocolati-fied shot glass rims were really cool, (by the way I love using these tall-ish shot glasses…) but the star of the show were the sparkly ‘love-bombs’ in my Raspberry Sorbet Champagne cocktails–recipe here!

Fun Stuff to Do

Before we watched our movie, I gathered my friends around and taught them how to use the Cricut Maker to design their own custom self-love/Galentine’s hoodies.

You can see exactly how I set everything up here. Everyone came up with such cute designs, and they all sort of went with the “self-love” theme! By the end of the night, each of us had our own custom hoodie. Not only was this a really engaging activity, but it also doubled as a party favor! 

We had a super fun night! Watch my vlog on YouTube! You can use these tips to plan your next intimate friend’s gathering–no matter the occasions!