New Year ‘s Eve is a very special night. It’s a time to reflect on the year that’s coming to an end and think about what the year ahead will bring. We like to spend it with the people near and dear to our hearts. Many people think of New Year’s Eve as a romantic night because of the traditional New Year’s kiss, but for us it’s about celebrating all of the loves in our life. So we don’t just wanna kiss our lovers at midnight, we want to embrace everyone around us! And that definitely includes each other. Oh, and we also wanna party.
While you could go out for New Year’s Eve, it can be expensive and tough to get around given so many people are out and about. Plus, going out can sometimes put a lot of pressure on having an epic night, so it gets “bigged” up and it’s easy to be disappointed. Our best New Year’s Eve’s to-date have been spent at someone’s house with good food, drinks and games. True story.
So we hosted our own party this year. And we had the best time. For the good food and drinks, we took it up a notch. I have a level three certification from the Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET), so I took the group through a little sparkling wine 101. The tasting was quite simple: I chose four different types of sparkling wine and paired them with canapés using ingredients that bring out their flavours: Cava, sparkling Rosé, Champagne and Asti Spumante. We’ve dedicated a whole other post to this activity, linked in “What You’ll Need” section below with a ton of notes so that your group can go through it together, regardless of your sparkling wine knowledge. So don’t be intimidated, get right up in there.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, then you’re aware of our love affair with games. So we created a game special for New Year’s Eve. It’s a NYE truth or dare. It’s nothing like the truth or dare you played in the school yard, it’s a grown up truth or dare focused on celebrating, reflecting, and sharing the year that’s coming to a close and just overall having fun with those close to you.
The best part of the entire party had to be our NYE photo wall. And we love sparkling wine, so that’s saying something. It was simple to make, and will 100% be the life of your party. Especially if you kick the photo-taking into high gear AFTER the sparkling wine tasting. I mean just look at us, we didn’t have fun at all.
For the sparkling wine tasting:
- Sparkling wine, canapés and tasting notes. We’ve got a whole other post just for that here
For the NYE photo wall:
- Gold streamers. We got our from Amazon here. If you don’t want to see any wall behind your streamers then you’ll want to get two packs and layer them (or tape gold wrapping paper behind the streamers)
- Tape
- Props. We used sparklers, noise makers and NYE headbands
- Light. We use this one.
For the NYE Truth or Dare:
- Our truth or dare print out, which you can download here
- Two bowls or glass containers (one for placing the folded truth cards, one for dare cards)
For the party itself:
- Gold decor wherever possible. We grabbed a gold tray from Ikea, a gold garland, gold stars, gold Christmas balls, etc.
- Lot’s of ice (you can never have too much)
- Extra bottles of bubbly
- Snacks
- Napkins
- Friends, pals, buds
Time to bring it all together. We recommend starting off with the sparkling wine tasting. From there, keep the bubbly going, add in some snacks and then set up the truth or dare. You can have the photo wall up the whole time, but we guarantee you people will gravitate towards it once a couple of glasses of bubbly are down the hatch.
