How to Plan a Surprise Party

The pleasure of a surprise party is perhaps one of the greatest joys a friend can impart to you.

You feel the small break in your chest as you realize that you were wrong about your plans, but it’s replaced by the full-body thrill of adrenaline as a bunch of people jump out and yell, “Surprise!”

And you laugh nervously, and everyone else laughs, and the party is off to a great start. You have a special glow about you as you move about the party because it is for you. It was all for you. And that’s what makes a surprise party so special.

But it’s surprisingly difficult to pull off a surprise party. Here’s how to make sure it goes off without a hitch.

Make Sure the Honoree Likes Surprises

It may make no sense. You might be saying to yourself, “Everyone likes a good surprise! Who wouldn’t like a well thought out surprise party?”

Well, there are indeed people who don’t like surprises of any kind — including a surprise birthday party. To these types of people, described here, surprises make them anxious because they didn’t expect what happened to happen. It can make them nervous for the rest of the night (“What else will happen that I don’t know about?”)

And while most people will find a surprise party cute, thoughtful, and a sign of love, those who don’t like surprise might very well be angered at having been duped. How could they not see it coming? There were probably clues that it was happening — even if you did your best to conceal them — that could frustrate the honoree.

So before you plan a surprise party, it would be best for everyone involved to guarantee that the person you’re throwing it for actually likes surprises.

It’s hard to ask that person directly, because then that plants the seed in their head that you would plan a surprise party for them at some point, and they would be suspicious. You could ask their friends to see if the person reacted negatively to surprises in the past or if they enjoyed the surprise, but you might not know the contact info for the honoree’s friends.

The best approach to ensuring someone would like a surprise party would be to bring parties up casually in conversation, mention a surprise party, and see how they would respond to a hypothetical of a surprise party being thrown in their favor. The sneakier you are about asking whether they’d like a surprise party, the lower the chance you’ll tip them off that you’re planning one for them.

When you feel confident that the person would indeed like a surprise party, you next have to involve the right group of people in the party planning.

Get the Necessary People Involved

The best surprise parties include lots of people, and the more booming the yelled “Surprise!” is, the better the response from the person the party is in honor of.

But with more people comes a higher chance that someone will spill the secret to the party honoree and effectively ruin the surprise. The whole point of a surprise party is that the honoree has no idea about what’s going to happen.

So when planning a surprise party, be sure to include people you know can keep a secret. If you have to thin the number of guests to keep the integrity of the secret, so be it. Your top priority should be that the surprise party honoree has no idea what’s going on.

You’ll most likely have to lean on another person to ensure the party goes smoothly, whether it’s borrowing a friend’s apartment to avoid suspicion of a surprise party or asking a friend to get balloons for the event. You have to make sure that these friends are cognizant and careful. One exposed receipt or a bag full of balloons thrown in the back seat can tip the honoree off.

Involve the right people — those who have preferably planned a surprise party in the past. If they haven’t, make sure they have some common sense and foresight to keep a secret.

Choose the Right Location

If you’re planning a surprise party, you have a rough idea of how you want the ideal product to look. Perhaps it’s at a big venue hall with hundreds of people, because the honoree has lots of friends who would all want to be included in a surprise party.

If that’s the case, you’ll have to pick a venue that can accommodate that many people in terms of floor space, toilets, and perhaps food.

A smaller surprise party could take place at a restaurant. You don’t have to pay for the venue except for, say, ordering food. The restaurant can most likely accommodate you, and you just have to make sure the honoree is the last at the table to show up.

The restaurant method takes less planning on your part but still elicits the surprise response in the honoree. Who would have known their favorite people were also showing up at their dinner?

Planning the location is up to you, but just make sure it makes sense with what the honoree would want. There’s no use in ordering a big venue for someone who wouldn’t appreciate it, for example. When it comes to knowing what the honoree would want, you’ll need to rely on the next tip.

Using Your Knowledge of the Honoree

Some people are oblivious to everything around them, which makes it really easy to say, “Oh, I just need to stop by my apartment to grab something, can you help me?” and surprise them.

Other people are more aware of their surroundings. These are the people who can note the details of a passerby’s face and remember details very well. In short, they’re as close to amateur Sherlock Holmes as you can get in the 21st century, so it’s harder to pull the wool over their eyes.

That’s why you need to know the person you’re throwing the surprise party for pretty well. If you try to make an excuse about something that would seem totally out of the ordinary to them, then you’ll tip them off immediately.

Take, for example, if they never go to the movies, but you suddenly suggest that they go to the movies that night. They’d be suspicious and ask questions, which forces you to lie and increases the odds that you’ll be caught in a lie, which could cause you to have to reveal the truth about the party and ruin the surprise.

It’s hard to plan a surprise party for someone you don’t know very well. But as a general rule, stating that you have a general yet important plan that the person can’t skip, such as a group dinner date or a business meeting, is enough to make sure someone clears their schedule for the appropriate time.

Pick the Right Date for the Party

If you’re planning, say, a surprise birthday party, it would be quite obvious what the vague event you’ve been describing would be if it fell directly on the honoree’s birthday.

So if you’re planning a surprise party, it’s best to choose a few days before or after the actual person’s birthday because they’re less likely to expect it. Before the actual date is preferred, as people are less likely to predict that the event would be a surprise party.

If you’re planning a surprise anniversary party or going away party or any other event, make sure it falls on a day that’s convenient for the honoree. Yes, they’re less likely to suspect a party in the middle of the week, but they could be busy with work and not necessarily feel like partying on a Wednesday.

Take stock of what the person’s schedule looks like and check-in with their friends to see if they’ve got any other events going on.

It would be bad to plan the surprise party only to find that the honoree isn’t coming because they have a prior engagement that day. A little more polite digging into the honoree’s life can ensure that fluke doesn’t happen.

Give Yourself Plenty of Time to Decorate

Lots of good surprise parties involve someone walking into their room only to find that their roommate decorated it with balloons and banners. This not only surprises the honoree, but it allows them to immediately enjoy the party in the comfort of their own home.

But since you’re the one planning the party, you have to make sure you give yourself plenty of time to set up the decorations and ensure it’s all complete before the honoree comes. If they hear someone rapidly filling balloons from behind the front door, they’ll immediately be tipped off.

So give yourself time to inflate the balloons (longer if you don’t have a balloon pump), tape up the banners, and get the party lights blazing. You could also run to the store so that you can dig into some delicious cake when the honoree comes.

Decorating may take longer than you expected — especially if it’s only you decorating for your friend. Clear out an hour or two to get everything set up and clean away any trash. You want the honoree to walk into a completed scene, not an unfinished one.

If Decorating at the Honoree’s Place

If you’re planning the surprise party at the honoree’s place, you’ll have less time to decorate — especially if the honoree doesn’t have a chaperone. If you honoree comes home 30 minutes early, you should make sure that you have at least most of the guests there and most of the decorations set up.

When decorating at the honoree’s place, set up quickly and efficiently. Pick the most crucial decorations to set up then move onto less important ones, like streamers or banners.

Keep Decorations Away from Windows

It goes without saying that if you’re decorating an apartment or home for the surprise party that you should keep decorations away from windows. If you can see the big inflated balloons spelling “Surprise!” from outside the window, at least draw the curtains or pull the blinds.

Choose the Right Chaperone for the Honoree

A chaperone for a surprise party honoree is essentially the person who shepherds the person from place to place without letting the honoree know but communicates the honoree’s location to the rest of the party-goers. It’s an important job because it lets all the guests know where the honoree is and how far away they are from the party.

However, the chaperone role is hard. It’s easy to slip up and make a mistake, planting a seed of a surprise party if they mention anything the honoree finds suspicious. Therefore, the chaperone has to be a good liar and good communicator on their phone.

Someone who can’t keep a straight face while lying as well as someone who takes forever to respond to a text perhaps shouldn’t be the honoree’s chaperone.

Getting Everything for the Party

Since people will be sticking around once the honoree comes and the surprise has been appropriately broken, folks will want to eat food, listen to good music, and have lots of tasty drinks to sip on.

As the mastermind behind the party, it’s your job to make sure all the libations and food are at the party as well. In addition to planning on the honoree’s deception, you need to plan the logistics behind the party. What kind of food will you have — pizza? Or something fancier?

A good party also includes a good playlist. This playlist should ideally include tunes the honoree enjoys, but there are party songs that lots of people like and will surely boost the mood of the party.

Make sure there are ways to cut the cake, as well as to light the candles. If guests bring presents for the honoree, there should be a discreet place to put them so that they’re not in the way of the honoree’s line of vision when walking in.

Supplying food, drinks, and perhaps silverware and plates would be a lot to support financially. You could ask your guests to chip in financially or ask everyone to bring an item of food like a potluck. Someone could grab the main course, another person the deserts, another person the sides and whatnot.

The potluck method means multiple people ensure there’s enough to eat at the party, and the cost doesn’t fall on one person.

Invite Guests Individually

If you plan on inviting a lot of guests, this can be quite time-consuming. However, inviting guests individually ensures a number of things.

The first is that they’re more likely to show up. People are used to getting a generic link for the party without any actual thought about them as a person. But reaching out to each guest individual makes them feel like you thought about them and cared enough about them as a person to warrant such a specialized invite. That extra care will entice people to come.

The second is that you can make sure people know it’s a surprise party and that they need to keep that fact a secret from the honoree. As with the individual invite, people are more likely to listen to what you say because they feel like this invite is between you, them, and the honoree — though it will, of course, involve more folks.

To help things go more smoothly — ensuring people show up and actually keep the surprise party a secret — spend a little extra time inviting people individually.

Tell Your Guests What You Want Them to Do

Perhaps the party is themed. A particularly funny surprise party is to dress up as the person you’re honoring. If this person has a mustache, show up in a mustache. If they wear a tie and button-down all the time, show up dressed like that. It adds an extra element of surprise to not only walk into a party thrown in your honor, but everyone there looks like you.

Therefore, make sure to communicate to your guests what you want them to do, where you want them to enter the party location, and how you want them to hide when the surprise time draws near. The last thing you want on the day of a surprise party is a surprise you didn’t anticipate because of poor communication.

The Moment of the Surprise

The time has come. You hear the chaperone’s key turning in the lock, and the door clicks open.

At that moment, you have to make sure everything in the party is set up to maximize the surprise. Turn down the lights. Make sure everyone is hiding behind furniture and that the music is off. The blinds and curtains should be drawn, but take a moment to double-check.

The scene should be silent and dim. There will be a moment when the chaperone walks in and ushers in the honoree. Perhaps the chaperone mentions that the honoree needs to get something from the kitchen where everyone is hiding.

Since you’re the one who organized the party, you should be the first one to jump up and yell surprise. Everyone else will quickly follow in your lead and cause an explosion of “Surprise” to reverberate throughout the room.

The honoree will most likely stare open-mouth and laugh, perhaps chastising the chaperone for tricking them all day. But soon enough, it will be worth it because the surprise was pulled off successfully. All that’s left is for the thrill to wear off and for the music and merriment to commence.

Good Excuses to Throw Off the Honoree

If you’re stumped for ways to throw the honoree’s off the scent of a surprise party, you can employ one of these tactics.

  • Ask them to help run an errand with you. Lots of helpful friends wouldn’t think twice about helping you run an errand, such as helping you pick up some items out of a friend’s house. You could also say that you left your wallet at a cafe a couple of days ago and you need to go pick it up real quick.

    With such a minor, everyday request, it’s unlikely that the honoree will suspect that the real reason for the errand is to transport them to the site of the surprise party. The better a liar you are, the more surprised the honoree will be!

  • Ask them to help you plan a surprise party for someone else. It’s a classic reversal. You ask someone to plan a surprise party, but it’s actually for themselves. The ultimate surprise! The honoree has no idea that the labor they put into planning the surprise party would be for their own enjoyment.

    This method would be best if you’re throwing a surprise party for the type of person who likes to have a party in a very particular way. But since they think they’re planning it for someone else, they’ll most likely plan it for the enjoyment of another person, not themselves.

    Still, you can lie and say the fake honoree has tastes similar to the real honoree to help the party process along. When the actual day of the surprise party comes, you can then make up a fake excuse to quickly grab a wallet from a cafe or something along those lines to trick the real honoree.

    Imagine their surprise when they realize the party was for them all along, not another person. It amplifies the surprise.

  • You forgot something at your place (or the honoree’s place, or your friend’s place). Another believable excuse is that you simply forgot something at where the surprise party location is taking place.

    People forget things all the time — and it’s especially more believable if you don’t have a great memory, and the honoree is used to you forgetting things. Your poor memory can work in your favor!

    Then you’ll just go “pick up” whatever you forgot as you normally would. Listen to music in the car or make small talk as if it were any other day. And once you twist the key and enter where the party’s happening, the honoree will realize you didn’t, in fact, forget anything. They fell for it! And party merriment will ensue.

Tips for Planning a Surprise Party

Minimize Surprises on Your End

Checklists, checklists, checklists. Surgeons use them, pilots use them, and lots of other professionals use them. The reason? Your brain is bad at remembering everything it has to do to pull off a process. It’s likely to forget a process. And for a surprise party, forgetting to do something could throw off the whole process.

Therefore, make sure you write up a checklist of everything that needs to be done from day one of planning up to the day of the surprise.

Some items on the list will be obvious, such as buying decorations, baking the cake, and inviting guests.

But there could be less obvious items to take care of, such as moving your car out of the honoree’s driveway and ensuring no one else parks there.

Checklists make sure you know everything that needs to be done to pull off a task then have a physical reminder of when those tasks have been completed. When the last box has been checked off, you know that the surprise party is complete and that you pulled it off without a hitch.

Delegate As Much As You Can — To People You Trust

Surprise parties take a lot. It would be a lot of stress to take on if you’re the only one planning it. This stress is amplified the more people are invited, as that means there are more people to accommodate.

To help keep your blood pressure low, you should consider delegating party responsibility to people you trust. One person can be in charge of the guest list while another person takes care of the food. Someone else can handle music and entertainment while you’re in charge of chaperoning the honoree.

Delegation helps break up all the work that goes into planning a surprise party, but it also means that miscommunication could cause a problem. Everyone needs to be on board with the vision of the surprise party and communicative to ensure everyone remains on the same page.

If someone’s taking longer to respond to everyone’s message or to do their assigned job, they can cause delays in how well the party goes. So make sure that the people you delegate responsibilities to are responsible, cognizant, and communicative to take some of the stress off of you.

Use Scented Candles to Hide Smells

If you baked the cake where the party is being held because you didn’t have any other place to do it, the smell of freshly baked cake can throw off the normalcy of the event that the honoree is walking into. The food waiting to be eaten at the party could also throw off the honoree.

If you’re worried about smells throwing off the surprise, you can use scented candles to hide party odors. You could also use odor removing sprays like Febreeze to mask the scent briefly.

Surprise parties are a gift in themself. They require a lot of work on the planner’s part for the enjoyment of the honoree. The effort required is worth it when the honoree really has no idea they were in for a party, and everyone involved knows they did a good job to give the honoree a great time.

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