House party for dh's 40th birthday - etiquette on sharing costs plus ground rules etc?

[bossykate]

not sure he is worth it but i am considering organising a house party for dh's 40th birthday which will fall on the late may bank holiday weekend.

what i am thinking of is a large house with decent (ok pretty nice) facilities, pref with lots of stuff for kids and near the sea, max 2 hrs from london. it will be very close friends plus their kids - say 4 - 7 families in total with kids ages ranging from babies - 6 yo.

in the ideal world i think i would like to fund for the whole group:

• the cost of the accommodation
• all drinks over the weekend
• one slap-up catered meal on the saturday night

Other food to be funded by the group.

however i'm not sure the budget would stretch to funding all that - in fact let's assume that it won't ...

[first question]... could i invite people to a weekend like this on a totally shared cost basis? or would that be off? should we simply do a simpler, cheaper celebration?

[and second question]... suppose we do go ahead one way or another, what ground rules do you suggest for a harmonious weekend?

I'm doing something fairly similar for my 30th. Except I fortunately don't have to hire the property (borrowing!) and it will be a mix of people staying in the house and camping in the grounds. We're inviting 45 + 15 kids!

I will be sending out an agenda with meal times and what they are and the RSVP sheet coincides so people tick which meals they will be there for so people can come for as much or little of the weekend as they like. Kid's meals are at 5.30pm, adults at 8pm.

I am not expecting anyone to pay anything but I am requesting they bring alcoholic drinks and if they are happy to contribute a dish then to let me know. e.g. puddings, salads etc. I know most of my friends will be happy with this.

Entertainment wise there is a swimming pool, bouncy castle, and garden games. And a play room will be set up in the house with a TV for just kids.

If I'm honest:-
a) its your dh's 40th. I would be expecting to be invited to a fairly decent party for which I wouldn't be paying. This looks like an "instead of" rather than "as well as", so as your friend I'm a free party down .
b) it is your dh's bday so you are pretty much going to be setting the budget, location etc. If I were holidaying with you I would expect a fair amount of input. But in these circs I would feel that I would have to go along with what you suggest. I might be able to afford the £1k for a weekend away, but actually if it isn't to my taste etc I might feel a bit p*ed off afterwards. Take Ickworth for example - you thought it was OK, I thought it was poor value. If I'm looking at spending £1k at a hotel for the weekend then I'm expecting excellent service, but in this instance that is just for the house, and I'm still getting breakfast, clearing up after my brood, washing up etc.

I may be far from representative of your friends though. The one thing I would say though is that, were I invited, I would definitely offer to contribute towards the cost of accommodation, so perhaps you could hope that the manners of your guests are such that you would get a similar response? I suspect it is the compulsion aspect that seems slightly uncomfortable.

But if these are friends, sound out one of them and you'll have the view of all of them within a week.

you wouldn't get three nights at the ickworth with 2 beds + bath for £1k... but yes in general i think you're right!

will ponder more.

actually, i'm not sure dh would be into the idea.

git

it all sounds like a huge faff to me tbh

Have a party in London!

(though as a PM I guess you like faff )

Bossykate - we had the kids doubling up in bedrooms etc - they thought it was great and saved on the number of rooms needed. There are a number on the website that have bunk bedrooms/camp beds which are fine for kids.

We are having a house party for our wedding anniversary in August.

Something that was very important to me when we were considering it was that I did not want to be asking people for money. We were deciding what to do, where etc, so I felt it was important that people can make a decision to come without having to be concerned about paying for a weekend away that isn't within their holiday budget for the year when it's our celebration.

We are hiring a house for 24 people plus a few babies, we are paying for the accommodation plus a catered meal on the Saturday night. We'll get some shopping in and do some cooking otherwise and will probably ask guests to bring booze.

It works out very expensive that way, obviously, but I didn't feel comfortable having a celebration like that where people had to pay. If we hadn't been able to get the money together for what we want to do we would have scaled it down, had less people, or had more people to a different kind of celebration, a meal or party at home or something.

Just my opinion though

Oh, and I have organised a house party for someone else's anniversary before, with a smaller budget and asking couples to pay. It was awkward and difficult, some made it clear they weren't happy, some wanted to only come for one night rather than two, some wanted to look for cheaper alternative accommodation nearby, etc

I've done a few. One place in Dorset/Somerset was beautiful-www.holcot.com- a huge farmhouse with loads of beds- very lovely kithcen and party room- basement with ping pong and pool table and, get this- a big pre fab at the bottom of the garden with a heated swimming pool and hot tub!! It was heaven and I did it in May and paid about £1500 for a week. I got a bit of a deal as didn't book till last minute and they had a vacancy. Obviously self catering. We all brought bags and bags of Sainsburys shopping and booze and split accomodation costs. It is seriously lovely and we went with 16 of us so didn't seem expensive at less than £100 a week each but there were beds for more than 16 so we could have taken more people. Another good and cheap option is youth hostels that do exclusive hire. We did Hartington hall in Derbyshire, amazing old manor house with grounds and lots of kids stuff, even petting zoo. Not grotty youth hostel rooms, really decent rooms and lots of singles and doubles, not dormitories. We didn't pay a fee for the weekend we just asked everyone to pay the B and B rate for the h0stel which was about £20 a night. They obviously got breakfast with this then we fed them a big meal Saturday lunch and Saturday evening then wandered down for a pub lunch together on Sunday. The folks that run it are great and let you design your own party, practically give you the keys for the weekend or are on hand to cater if you need it. If you don't fill all 132 beds then there is a hire charge but it's not much. Youth Hostel assoc have a lot of other glamourous old houses on their books and again cheap as chips. Some are in castles, etc. There are smaller venues as well (not sure how many guests you want) but lots of them have lovely accomodation, not nasty dormitories at all. Check out their website and the Hire a Hostel section I think it's YHA.org.uk or similar.

tbh I'd be pretty embarrassed if I was asked to pay £400 to go to a birthday party. If I was throwing it myself I would probably expect to pay £1k to £2k. Yes, it is going to be more expensive than a party in your own house, inevitably.
I'd reduce your spec in terms of number of bedrooms (either put more kids together or ask families to sleep together) and bathrooms - neither of the ones I went to provided 2 bedroosm per family.
Perversely, I think that the less expensive you make it, the easier it will be to be able to ask people to contribute, either in money or in kind.

hi everyone

thanks so much to everyone for these messsages .

the overwhelming view is that, because of the nature of the occasion, we should fund the accommodation. have to say i agree with the reasons that have been put forward in support of this approach. so thanks to all for helping me get that straight in my mind

we will definitely be having a big party at home as well. it is my 40th this year too and also, we have more than 4 other families' worth of friends to invite!

i will continue to look into the houseparty option and get some quotes (thanks very much to noughty for the yha suggestion) to see if i can find anything cheaper that would fit the bill. i just can't stomach paying say £3.5k for one weekend. that would take the family somewhere pretty decent for a whole week!

i also think it's worth exploring the option of a house party unconnected with any specific occasion which we would be obliged to host, where it would be more appropriate to share costs. having said that i think it would be a nightmare to organise, because people would feel very free to whinge make useless helpful suggestions as to venue, costs etc.

cd, as a project manager i relish the organisation piece, but find the people elements of pm quite difficult outside the work environment as i'm used to people just damn well doing what i say i have a friend who does this quite regularly with a group of university friends and finds it quite a challenge!

thanks very much to all, your comments and opinions have been very helpful

ps - how much time do you think dh has spent thinking of something nice to do for my b'day? big fat zero that's how much i'll bet

hey, I mentioned youth hostels first

Bet you're right about dh. Mine turned 40 first and I organised whole bash, though with him as client, so having a fair bit of input/interference.

His comment afterwards was that I could take a brief rest before organising my 40th!

haven't read whole thread so sory if repeating but have a look here

Did you check out www.holcot.com? I want you to see how lovely it is! No idea if it is more than two hours from London though; I can't remember but I remember it was truely fab.

elliott - oops thank you too

teuch - thanks for that.

peasoup - it looks fab but no w/e rentals only weeks - surely people wouldn't expect me to stump up for a whole week

ladymuck - gah! those dhs

A whole week in May in Holcot is £2000 but it says to rent for just the weekend deduct £200, so £1800 for a weekend. Or blow £2000 on it and stay the week with just your DH and family and bob about in the hot tub sipping booze for seven lovely days! Sorry, i sound like I work for their marketing department or something!! I don't; I just am sat here relishing the memory of that weekend; wishing someone I know would throw a country house party...
P.S. Sorry to steal your thunder about the youth hostels, Elliot. God I'm really in the mood for a party now reading this!! Those were the days.

Also don't forget, whatever option you go for you can always try and knock them down on price! May isn't a very busy time for house rentals.
Also you could stump up for the accomodation costs but ask folks to bring food and booze and gve them a shopping list so you get what's needed. I don't think anyone could mind that at all. Or mute the idea with you friends about you all splitting the accomodation costs; it could be they are well off enough to not mind at all; it depends on your circle of friends.

Any more plans for the party? Sorry am just being nosey cos I love parties!! Even other people's parties that I'm not even gonna be invited to.. I can live vicariously thinking about all of you sipping champers on the lawn....

sorry to disappoint, peasoup, no further developments thanks for asking. i have got an email box at home bulging with replies to my requests for costs and availability though, so i plan to take a look tomorrow.

Just being nosey..

ok, update for peasoup (turns out you are a local ) and in the unlikely event anyone else is interested

i've sorted through replies from the ones i've contacted - predictably many are booked for that weekend.

but i have found somewhere i like the look of which is at the "low" end of the estimates and which provides a total catering option with no corkage fee... which works out at pretty good value and has the added benefit of eradicating some potential flashpoint issues in the party... a lower fee inevitably means less swank and fewer facilities, but we would hardly be slumming it, so all in all if we decide to spend the money, i think we have the place sorted at any rate. however i haven't yet checked out the YHA options which i will do very soon.

i ran the idea past dh (he would hate the idea of a surprise party) and he seemed keen. i have told him the decision needs to be his (hardly worth bothering if he isn't into it) and needs to be soon!

dh then belatedly woke up to the fact that my 40th b'day is before his... so he asked me what i wanted to do. having told him i didn't want to have to decide for myself, i proceded to tell him anyway!

all nearly spoiled by him saying it was very kind of me (yes it is!) considering "the current situation" (i.e. we're going to relate) - made me want to smack him frankly. git. perhaps i could find another husband who would appreciate me more?