How To Throw A Student House Party On A Low, Medium & High Budget

9th December 2015 Chris Clark Accommodation Basics, Careers and Finance, London Life

Whether you’re in urbanest King’s Cross or St Pancras, students love to party. There is no denying that. If you’ve been at university for a while now, in a house or in luxury student studio, you’ve probably been lucky enough to receive an invite to some pretty awesome shindigs.

Now you’ve been to a fair few, you and your housemates might have come to the agreement that you want to hold a bash of your own. To help, we’ve made a guide on how to throw a student house party, no matter your budget.

Low Budget

Cost: £0-£10

1. Create a Facebook event

Guest list:  The cheapest way to invite your guests is by creating a Facebook event. But before you do, call a house rendez-vous to draw up a list of invitees. Decide on a number that you think will give you enough room to ensure you don’t feel like a can of sardines. Make the event private so you don’t have to hire bouncers to kick out random weirdos. Bear in mind, you’re not as popular as you think. Whilst 500+ friends might click attending, about half will turn up.

2. Plug in massive speakers

Entertainment: Hopefully one of your friends will own some awesome massive speakers, so all you have to do is plug them in to your laptop. Create a playlist on spotify that suits all music tastes. Turn the music up loud, but not too loud, you need to hear each other speak. To avoid noise complaints, sit the speakers in armchairs and insulate windows with mattresses.

3. Skip the food and BYOB

Food and drink: Remember, most guests are probably at your house party to have a good time, meet new people, or procrastinate from work. Therefore, if you are on a tight budget it is probably not worth purchasing any food or drink. State on the Facebook event that it is a B.Y.O.B shindig (‘Bring Your Own Booze’ for anyone who’s not with the times) and grab some flyers from the local takeaways for people to sort their hunger out on the way home. You could buy a few nibbles such as crisps and nuts to put on the side, but they will probably either be gone 2 minutes in to the party or end up all over the house after Frederick and Jonathan act like the grown ups they are and throw them at one another.

Related – Kings College London Student Accommodation

4. Turn on the lamps

The décor: Turn the main lights off but turn on a few lamps to set the mood and help people see where they are going. That’s all you need really…

Medium Budget

Cost: £100 – £500

1. Be selective with invites

Guest list: On a medium budget, you need to be slightly more selective on your guests, rather than inviting people you met one time, on a night out, that you spoke to once. This is because you need to count how many heads you need to cater for. Organise the date for the party well in advance and invite your guests face-to-face or by phone call. Tell them they need to let you know if they are coming by a certain date so you don’t overspend. Decide whether to invite your neighbours or just warn them about the party in advance; it is polite and they can arrange to go out if they don’t like the thought of being kept awake by party-goers.

2. Hire a DJ

Entertainment: Do you have a friend that is a DJ? Or does a friend of a friend know someone? Offer him or her £50 or so to DJ your party, they’ll be happy to have their first gig if they are recently getting in to DJ-ing and it will help to create a great atmosphere, especially when they ‘drop a killer beat’.

Otherwise, you could create a theme to your house party such as murder mystery where you ask your guests to come dressed as different characters. You could create different clues and have the guests work out who the murderer is throughout the night.

3. Stock up on party food

Food and drink: To save effort, go down to a high-end supermarket and visit the party food isle. They are full of things you can just throw in the oven and the only thing you need to worry about is over cooking them. Likewise you could make your own sandwiches or order some pizzas (they always go down a treat and house parties). If you don’t fancy preparing food yourself, ask a local café or restaurant how much they’ll charge for you to order a few platters.

When it comes to drink, you can’t just have beer and think that your eclectic mix of friends are going to be okay with that. You need to have beer, wine (both red and white), vodka, rum, and probably whisky. If you can stretch your cash, hire a pop up bar. That way you won’t look like a total alcoholic when you go and buy all the booze for the party.

4. Theme your rooms

The décor: If you’ve chosen a theme for your event, you’ll probably have a good idea on how you want to decorate your house for the party.  If you don’t have a set theme, just purchase some balloons, buntings and red cups – students love red cups.

High Budget

Cost: Expensive

1. Invite everyone (creatively)

Guest list: Invite everyone you know. Invite them in a really creative way, too. If you are having a theme try and link it to that. e.g. if you are having a music festival theme, send out invites that look like festival tickets, or if you are having the house party all about you and your housemates, bring out the inner MTV Sweet Sixteen in you and hand out your invitations personally to each of your guest’s home, by horse and carriage, or hover board if you’re too cool for horses.

2. Hire a band

Entertainment: Is there a particular band that everyone is really into at the moment? Then the ultimate entertainment would to get them to play at your house party. Everyone will just think you’re the coolest person/people ever and it only cost you a few hundred grand. Make sure you’ve got a great sound system, too. Hire bouncers too,  some might say hiring bouncers is not entertainment, but seeing the bouncers throw out the student who jumped in front of you, in the queue, at the local store last week is comedy gold.

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3. Bring in catering

Food and drink: Call a top restaurant and get them to cater for your party. Make sure you have enough hors d’oeuvres to go round. Likewise, if you want to add a personal touch you can make your own or get your personal chef to make them for you. Smoked trout, caviar and oysters are must haves.

For drink, again you can purchase the top of the range pop up bar or get your butlers (in the buff if you wish) to wait on your guests with glasses of Krug Clos d’Ambonnay 1998.

4. Re-design your home

The décor: Get an interior designer to re-design your house with the theme of your party or just so that it looks really expensive. Then pay them to organise getting the renovators in to do it. Then sit back, let the magic happen and count your riches… 

Do you have any advice on how to throw a student house party? Let us know in the comments.

Chris Clark

Chris Clark

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