We miss the good old days of college so we wanted to plan an alumni themed college party for a bunch of us old alumni... wow it has already been 20 years since then... where has the time flown?! Ok, so, we didn't all go to the same college, so we then needed to combine, several different universities and colleges together for this party. Here is how we organized the party. Perhaps this can help others.

We figured we had about 25 of our friends coming over, so we chose our house as we had plenty of room. We considered a small pavilion at a local park here in Long Island, as well as a community center in town in case we had it grow to 40+ people. We sent out to 40 people but only 25 replied with a yes.

Remember to send out your invites. In this day and age, with this thing that Al Gore invented called the internet, we have lots of online ways to contact people. >From emails to something really cool like evite.com. Remember to email people early but not too early, (4 to 6 weeks seems right) and ask for RSVPs! We didn't tell them it was going to be a college themed party, so we made sure to scope out where they went to school and took notes on it 3 to 6 months early. We kept a list so we'd know if we had everybody or not

The next step is making sure you get all of the right party accessories. Look for cups, plates, gift wrapping paper, gift bags, grosgrain ribbon, small or large stickers, luncheon napkins (you can pre-order the invitations IF you all went to the same college and send them out via snail mail! And don't forget the table cloths. All of these should be appropriately college themed. Get different ones for each group of friends of course, and be sure to NOT LEAVE anybody out!

One of our friends played football at college, so we got some extra football accessories for him with a little U of Texas helmet on his plate, a small nerf U of Texas football, and a set of POMPOMs! If you can find some stuffed mascot dolls, you'll want to place each one of these throughout the party area. And don't forget your balloons. Be sure to accessorize each table with its own table cloth with the correctly matching colored balloons.

We also found some college candles and had those matched on each table cloth. It was really quite a site and everybody was rather surprised by this inexpensive but rather fun alumni "GLORY DAYS" party.

So what about food? Traditional American fare applies here. We hosted this party in the summer so we had a barbecue with hotdogs and hamburgers, sodas, chips. Nothing elaborate again as this was an informal surprise ALUMNI party. Everybody loved it and wanted to do it for some subsets of their friends as well. Looks like we'll be hosting an annual as everybody had a blast!