My Parties: How to Plan a Family New Year’s Eve Party Movie Night

We are definitely a quiet New Year’s Eve at home kind of family. But at the same time, we want New Year’s Eve to be more special than just a night where we stay up late. So this year, I started planning ahead so we could have a New Year’s Eve movie night party that’s fun for us and easy for me.

I staged this early to share with you. Fingers crossed that the sound our van is making is no big deal, and we’ll be at the beach on New Year’s. I’ll just recreate most of this look down there.

If you missed my other New Year’s Eve posts, you can link to them here:

• New Year’s Eve party plan (plan your party and shop for it in one night)
• New Year’s Eve party appetizers

My New Year’s Eve party plan includes lots of ideas for having fun until midnight. I think we’ll definitely take a deck of cards, some board games and Twister to the beach. But the main thing we’ll do is continue our new tradition of family movie night. I’ve ordered Holiday (1938) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972) on DVD so we’re all set with some romantic comedy and some action.

New Year’s eve movie night Party Sketch

As I’m brainstorming party ideas and they start to come together, my first step is usually a sketch of what I want the party to look like. I swear, if I don’t get this down on paper, I’ll forget my own ideas! As usual, the actual set up was pretty close to the sketch. The dessert table layout is a little different because of how things fit together.

New Year’s eve movie night Party Dessert Table

All I did for this party was a dessert table. I love designing dining table place settings, but since this is supposed to be an easy for me, quick set-up party, I just created a dessert table. To keep the focus on the desserts, I used all white serving pieces. The table is covered with two gold sequin table runners that I first used in my daughter’s Country Music Awards Karaoke birthday party and used again in their elementary school graduation party.

Here’s an overhead shot of the layout, so you can see how this asymmetrical arrangement fits together:

• The tallest item — the cake — is off to the left side and a little in front of the square stands.
• The film canisters in the backdrop point your eye to the cake.
• The two square stands are at the far back of the table and elevate the cheers glasses and the popcorn.
• Glitter lollipops also are elevated, so they are positioned toward the back in a cake pop stand.
• Low items go in the front, so my narrow tray holds the cupcakes. The candy dishes, dessert plates, forks and napkins also are in the front.

New Year’s eve movie night Party Backdrop

This backdrop was ultra easy. The crepe paper fringe comes in a pack with gold, silver and cream. Here’s how to create the look:

1. Measure the space you need to fill with your backdrop. My space was roughly 4 feet x 4 feet.
2. Cut the fringe streamers into fourths.
3. The fringe comes with two sides facing each other, so just gently peel those apart.
4. Using clear packing tape, pull out 4-feet of tape, sticky side up.
5. Lay the top edge of each streamer half-way onto the sticky side of the tape.
6. When all the streamers are in place, fold the packing tape down onto the top of the streamers.
7. Hang your backdrop. Since mine was going on a window, I just used additional pieces of clear packing tape to tape it right on the window. But, you also can tape it to a backdrop board and then prop that up on your dessert table.
8. Take one additional streamer and hang it horizontally to cover the top of the vertical streamers. I did this with blue poster tack.

If you want to add a Happy New Year banner, you also can tape that into place. And tomorrow, I’ll show you how to make the party horns garland, so be sure to come back. It was very inexpensive and really quick to put together.

Add a Movie Night Twist to Your Backdrop

Since my twist on the New Year’s Eve theme was a movie night, I added a few extra elements:

• With ribbon printed to look like film, I cut 4-foot strips and added five film ribbons on top of the fringe streamers.
• I used 3M Command Strips to hang vintage film canisters from the backdrop. Just put the Command Strips in between the streamers and no one will see them.
• I also added a garland of faux popcorn. You could certainly string your own popcorn, but I was all about purchasing instead of DIY’ing for this party because I wanted it to be easy on me.

I think this set up also would be super-cute for an Oscars viewing party.

New Year’s eve movie night Party Desserts

Our treats included:

• Chocolate cake with white vanilla buttercream icing, dusted in edible gold glitter.
• Champagne cupcakes with vanilla bean buttercream icing, also dusted in edible gold glitter.
• Champagne lollipops with back and gold edible glitter.
• Popcorn for watching movies.
• Hershey’s Kisses (for midnight kisses).

All the treats were purchased because this party is supposed to be easy on mom. And instead of champagne, we had sparkling cider.

Embellishing the Desserts

Half the fun of designing a dessert table is dressing up the desserts themselves.

• Top glittered cupcakes with a little more film ribbon.
• Pop shiny gold straws in your cheers glasses.
• Hot glue black satin bows and a gold glitter initial to gold popcorn boxes. (Then no one has to wonder whose box is whose.)
• Add a gold glitter 2018 topper to your cake.

How will you celebrate New Year’s Eve? Will you party at home? Stay awake til midnight? Let me know in the comments below! Remember come back tomorrow and I’ve have the party horns garland tutorial for you.

I hope you have a safe, healthy, happy and prosperous new year. Thank you for being with me here in 2017. After tomorrow’s tutorial, I’ll be taking a little blog break to spend time with my family and to plan for 2018 here at The Party Teacher. But I’ll be back soon in January – take care!

Vendor Credits:

• Party styling and photography: The Party Teacher
• Cake and cupcakes: Smallcakes Woodstock
• Cake topper: The Paper Prop Shop
• Film reels: Film Punk and Junk
• Film ribbon: Hollywood Baskets
• Happy new year garland: Earle’s Folly
• Lollipops: Sweet Caroline Confections
• Mini party hats: Little Blue Olive
• Fringe streamers: Witty Bash
• Gold sequin table runners: Floratouch
• Gold forks: Target
• Cheers glasses: Target dollar aisle
• Faux popcorn garland: Factory Direct Craft on Amazon
• Gold straws: Meri Meri
• Gold popcorn boxes: Amazon
• Black satin bows: Buttons Bags and Bows on Amazon