A Galentine’s Day party is a party that takes place around Valentine’s Day, but instead of celebrating your romantic love, you celebrate the platonic love of your friends. Sometimes it’s not possible to celebrate your friendships in person, and a virtual party becomes a necessity. Here are some tips for throwing the best virtual Galentine’s Day party you can.
Send Out Invitation Packages
Instead of just texting your friends a Zoom link, you can do a full party invitation package. For a traditional in-person party, you’d be planning hundreds of details, like invitations, decorations, food, and activities, but with a virtual option, some of these responsibilities won’t be relevant. Because of that, you have the chance to put more effort into the things you are doing, like invitations.
For your invitation, you can include small decorations, like a garland with heart-shaped pieces of paper on it, a mixed drink kit, or other small gifts for the party. If you’re considering a mixed drink kit, it can be a very fun way to make it feel like you’re all at the same party. Include ingredients for a cocktail of your choice with instructions to just add the liquor. If it’s an original cocktail and not a classic one, you can even have one of the activities for the party be learning how to properly make the drink.
Encourage Party Outfits
Even though you’ll be virtually hanging out, that doesn’t mean you all can’t dress like it’s a real party. If you’re part of the 32% of people concerned about how their teeth look, you can do your makeup to accentuate other parts of your face, or you can embrace your insecurities since you’ll be with your friends. You can set a dress theme — like red and pink clothes or pajamas — and encourage everyone to follow it. This way you can take some fun virtual selfies together using the boxes on your video calling platform.
If someone at the party is particularly good with photoshop, you should take advantage of that for a “group photo” together. Have everyone at the party take a picture in front of a blank wall and have your photoshop fluent friend edit a picture to make it look like you’re all together.
Make It Pet-Friendly
One of the best parts of a virtual party is that everyone can have their pets attend. Considering the fact that there are over 75 million pet dogs in the U.S. alone, at least one person at your party will probably have one. If you need an icebreaker to get the conversation going, having everyone introduce their favorite furry friends is a great way to get the ball rolling.
Watch a Movie Together
If your usual Galentine’s Day party includes watching a movie that you all love, there’s no reason to break tradition just because this year’s party is virtual. There are different apps that you can use to watch a movie together, and some streaming platforms even have a sharing option included. If everyone wears headphones, you can even keep up a video call while watching the movie. That’s a good option if you know that you all love to make jokes or chat while you’re watching the movie.
Choose a Recipe to Make Together
Whether you’re a group of dedicated chefs or if you use your kitchen appliances as storage space for your accessories, you can still cook or bake something “together” as a group. Pick a recipe that you think everyone will like and include the recipe card in the invitation package you send out. If you want to, you can even include the non-perishable ingredients (or perishable ingredients if you’re not shipping your packages). The fun of cooking together doesn’t have to be lost to virtual distance.
Some great recipe ideas could be cookies, pancakes, pizza, or any other food that isn’t overly complex and fits the time you’re having your party. For a brunch party, focusing on things like pancakes, waffles, french toast, or hashbrowns would make more sense, while a dinner party would necessitate something like pizza or pasta.
Who Said It Game
Another fun party game to do is a “Who Said It?” game. For this game, create a google survey ahead of time with a set of questions and have everyone answer. If you want to participate as the host, you can make the survey anonymous and have everyone record or remember their own answers. At the party, read out the answers that everyone gave and try to guess who gave what answer. This can get pretty fun depending on the questions that you choose to ask. You can ask more personal questions or you can choose funny questions meant to elicit a comedic response. You know your friends best, so you’ll be able to gauge what questions would make this game the most interesting.
Make Powerpoints About Silly Things
Powerpoint nights are very popular right now, which is when everyone at a virtual party makes their own slide show and presents it to the rest of the party. What makes this fun is that it isn’t about something serious like you would be presenting in a school or work setting. Instead, it’s about something that you actually want to talk about, like “Reasons Why I Love Taylor Swift” or “Everyone at This Party as Pictures of My Dog.” Everyone can make and present their own slideshow, or only people who want to participate can.
Decorate Cookies
If you usually decorate sugar cookies at your Galentine’s Day party, there’s no reason to skip out on it this year. Everyone can make (or buy) their own sugar cookies and frosting, or you can include both in your invitation boxes. If your friend group tends to get competitive, you can make this a competition as well, competing to win the honor of having the best-decorated cookie.
Virtual Galentine’s Day parties are a great way to have your regular yearly party without worrying about transmitting disease or having to travel to see long-distance friends. With fun invitation boxes and party games that have been converted to work in an online format, you’re bound to have an amazing party that all of you will love.