Tired of chocolates, flowers and inflated expectations? Throw an anti-Valentine’s Day party this year. It might sound bitter, but it’s all in good fun. Tell bad dating stories, complain about expensive gifts and party down with your single friends this Valentine’s Day.
Throw a love-free party
Step 1: Send playful invitations
Identify your single friends and hit them with the opposite of Cupid’s arrow. Create playful invitations online using a free graphics program like Picmonkey.com and print them at your local photo center or on your photo printer. Try sentiments like “Love stinks” or images of broken hearts. Include the date, time, RSVP information and anything you want your guests to bring to the party. Try something cute, like “In lieu of flowers, please bring horror stories about your worst dates ever.”
Step 2: Decorate your party space
Try shopping at your local party store in the “over the hill” and Halloween sections for macabre decorations. Decorate with wilted flowers covered in fake cobwebs. Print stock photos of smiling couples and glue them to printed pictures of dart boards or cover them in graffiti mustaches and devil horns. Hang black crepe paper and inflate black and gray balloons. If your friends have a wicked sense of humor, decorate with Cupid pictures that have been skewered or torn. The goal is to be over the top and playful, with just enough of an edge to get a handle on the idea of the anti-Valentine’s Day gathering.
Step 3: Schedule anti-Valentine’s Day activities
Give your guests the opportunity to stomp all over Valentine’s Day at your playful party. Create a karaoke playlist full of breakup songs and songs that embrace the single life. Host a contest for worst breakup story or dating story. Distribute Valentine’s Day cards and let your guests deface them with magic markers. Cover a magnetic surface with Magnetic Poetry and ask guests to create angry breakup poetry and lyrics. Play a version of charades where participants are invited to act out dating stereotypes that have been written on folded pieces of paper and placed in a bowl.
Step 4: Serve anti-Valentine’s Day food
What exactly is anti-Valentine’s Day food? Use your imagination. Try using cookie cutters and sugar cookie dough to make heart-shaped cookies. While the cookies are cooling, break them in half. Then decorate them with pink and red icing with a jagged edge. Alternately, you can leave heart-shaped cookies intact but ice them with anti-love phrases to mimic conversation hearts gone bad. Serve food you’d normally never eat on Valentine’s Day, like messy barbecue and pasta with loads of garlic.
More party tips
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A full anti-Valentine’s Day menu
Heart-shaped crepes recipe
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