If you are planning a New Year’s Eve party, you might want to consider requesting your guest wear formal attire to the party. Although this is not necessary, it can make the entire party appear more elegant and formal. It can also help to create a more formal atmosphere for the party. When hosting a New Year’s Eve party in your home, the predominant reason for requiring formal attire is to set a particular mood or atmosphere. However, if you are hosting your New Year’s Eve party at another location such as a catering hall, there may be other reasons to necessitate formal attire. Some restaurants or catering halls have their own requirements regarding attire. If you opt to host your party in one of these locations, you have to ensure your guests adhere to these requirements.

There are some important aspects to consider when you are planning to request formal attire for your New Year’s Eve party. One factor to consider is whether or not your guests will object to this requirement. This is an important consideration especially if you have guests will opt to not attend your party because of this requirement. Although this is not a likely scenario since most people already consider New Year’s Eve to be a formal situation.  It should be considered carefully if you believe it will affect attendance at your party. Again, if the party is hosted in your home, there will not likely be ramifications if a guest does not wear formal attire to the party because you will likely still allow them to attend. However, it is important to note that if the restaurant or catering hall where you will be hosting your New Year’s Eve party is implementing the dress code for your party, your guests may be turned away if they are not dressed properly.

When requesting formal attire at your New Year’s Eve party, it is important to note the attire guidelines on the invitations to ensure all guests are aware of how they are expected to dress for your party. One of the most popular ways to do this is to create one line on bottom of the invitation which states the attire requirements. Popular language for this statement includes, “Formal Attire,” “Black Tie Event,” or “Cocktail Attire Required.” Most guests will be familiar with this type of verbiage and will understand they are expected to dress formally for the occasion. If you are hosting the New Year’s Eve party in your home and there are no ramifications for guests who do not follow the attire recommendations, it is sufficient to state the attire guidelines on the invitation. If you are hosting the New Year’s Eve party in a restaurant or catering hall and they are enforcing the attire guidelines it might be worthwhile to make sure each guest understands these requirements. This is important because it could result in your guests being denied entry to the party.

There are a couple of ways you can help to ensure the guests understand the attire requirements. One way to accomplish your goal is to follow up your invitations with a phone call to each guest. During the phone call you can explain the attire requirements and make it clear guests who do not adhere to these guidelines will not be admitted. Another way to make sure guests are aware of the situation is to include a card in the envelop which explains the policies of the restaurant or catering hall and makes it clear that guests who do not follow these guidelines will not be allowed to enter the party.

Since you made the decision to host a New Year’s Eve party, in which guests will be required to dress formally, you have the responsibility of ensuring the event reflects the attire. For example it would be inappropriate to require formal attire and then serve foods which are difficult to eat and likely to result in a mess.

One of the greatest things about the month of December is seeing all of the holiday lights that pop up around the neighborhood.  While growing up, living in the country did permit the ability to see a variety of holiday lights.  Now that we have moved more into a suburban city, it is quite a different experience come the first day after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Since many people do not work that illustrious day after Thanksgiving, the holiday lights begin sprouting up that very morning.  Just taking a short drive around town allows you to see the husbands of the household dragging the big ball of tangled up strands of lights out of the garage, and then trying to make sense of the whole mess on the driveway or in the front yard.  Just taking one look at their faces as you drive by can tell you that it was not their idea to do this again this year.  However, there are some of the happy men outside whistling away as they dream of their display of holiday lights being the best in the neighborhood.

Soon after the lights are untangled, the ladders are dragged outside and the real fun begins.  Wives stand on the front porch directing where the holiday lights should be placed on the house, while the husbands stand on the wobbly old ladder struggling to use the staple gun to attach the lights to the area around the gutters.  Inevitably, some arguing, yelling and swearing takes place as the wife just doesn’t understand what is taking so long, and the husband is ready to throw the ladder across the street because the holiday lights keep falling off the house.  The ladder keeps slipping and the wife just doesn’t like the way they are looking.  After much grumbling, the lights are completed and in the evening the glorious holiday lights are turned on and everyone is happy again.

Driving around, one can see exactly which houses contain the husbands that swore at the big bundle of tangled lights, as they have holiday lights strewn across the lawn and house in no real pattern.  These will be the homes that have the holiday lights up all year long.  But turn the corner and there is a home that contains a man that was whistling away the entire time, with the self-constructed stars, perfect straight strands and plastic Santas decorating the yard.  Both types of houses make the holiday experience complete, and wives secretly sympathize with the houses full of grumblers and swear under their breaths at the houses with the whistlers.