Graduation season is here, and with that comes graduation parties! We at Pear Tree love to see all the great graduation party ideas that our customers come up with. You guys are all so creative!
This is an important celebration not only for your grad, but for you as a parent. It’s been a journey for both of you, and that’s absolutely worth celebrating! But throwing a party can be daunting, especially one that will make both kids and adults happy.
The best place to start is with your grad. What are his interests? How can you use her personality to come up with a party theme? Here are a few easy ways to incorporate your grad’s story into your graduation party ideas. We’ve chosen a sports theme, but the same design elements can work for any theme.
First Up: Invite with a Sports-Themed Grad Party
For many graduates, sports are a very important part of their journey through high school, so it’s a natural idea for a graduation party. We have the perfect sports-themed invites to honor the athletes in your life. They even allow for a few stats highlighting their (or their team’s) athletic achievements.
And Then: Set a Fun Menu
Every graduation party revolves around the food—what great party doesn’t? Considering there might be a lot of hungry athletes in attendance, in addition to other friends and family, you’ll want something easy.
A walking taco bar is easy and an absolute favorite with teens. A kitchen or bar area in a basement works well for your serving area, because the sink can double as a beverage center and sets a little more casual tone for the party.
What’s for dessert? We all agree, desserts should be pretty non-stress. A good cookie, brownie, cupcake or cake, and you really can’t go wrong. We cut out football shaped brownies and quickly drew on some football laces with frosting. We also made some delicious little cupcakes that featured the graduate’s number from high school as a topper along with stars…because they’re the star of the party!
Don’t Forget: Create Sports-Themed Grad Party Decorations
For extra touches, you can make sport-themed decor like these cute FOOTBALL SHAPED TISSUE POMS. You can easily adapt to create this look for tennis, baseball or even volleyball. To create a custom touch that honors their team, create a super fun napkin with that features your custom school logo. Everyone will love the little details.
One of the most unique things about every graduation party is the special way each family finds to honor their grad with photos and memories of their journey. We have some great ways to create custom photo decorations for your grad party that are soooo simple to make.
For this party we used a combination of childhood photos and our new personalized decorations. These pieces are SO versatile! For our party, we personalized them with photos, our grad’s name, jersey number and college plans. We then strung them, along with the childhood photos, onto a barnwood wall using mini clothespins. They can also be laid down on the table (which you’ll see down below), poked into centerpieces, cupcake toppers, and so many other ways. We love this new product!
Having some sort of guestbook isn’t a must-have at a graduation party, but it’s fun to have friends sign something as a memento that the grad can keep. We wanted to do something creative for this party, so we chose a t-shirt from his future college and had everyone sign it. You could also personalized a signature poster and frame it after the party for an awesome keepsake.
Lastly, the table centerpieces. You want to give guests something to chat about while sitting and eating and what better to do that than photos and mementos from the graduate’s past. We used our table photo confetti not only as table décor but also incorporated them into one of the centerpieces. Oh, and we found the green turf online—we thought it fit perfectly into this graduate’s high school passions and future plans!
Looking for more inspiration? Browse our graduation invitations to spark ideas.
Happy graduation party planning, everyone!
Thanks for the great ideas. My ‘baby’ will be graduating in May. While he doesn’t like sports, I loved the guest book college t-shirt idea. I intend to “borrow” it.
That’s great, Barbara! We love the college t-shirt idea, too. And remember, you can make the graduation party theme around any interests your grad may have – this is one example :). Congrats to your family and your son on this exciting accomplishment!
Where do you find the mini clothes pins?
So you really need to select very wisely
when selecting 1 for the room.