Mel Robbins shares how to make hosting easier and more fun: give each guest a small job like bringing a favorite game or snack so everyone feels like a co-host, and use playful dress codes like "wear the best thing in your closet" to spark conversation and connection.
One of the best ways to lower your anxiety about hosting is to share the burden. Okay. And what I mean by that is to in some way make everyone be a sub-host or a co-host in a way that would delight them. Oh. So with your friends, there's just one example. You don't have to do this. If you say you have 3 days together, sometimes I do this with, with friends' birthday parties, particularly for a big one. People are traveling to invite everyone to bring some kind of gift or offering. For the group. And that could be, I've done this before at a 40th birthday party. One person brought their favorite tiny little drops of a specific sunblock and their offering for the entire group was making sure that everyone didn't get a sunburn. And someone else brought their favorite game from their childhood and they introduced this game for 20 minutes.
You know what I love about that is that You gave people a specific assignment. They can get creative and then you don't end up with 14 bagels that nobody ate and tubs of potato salad that people want to jam in your fridge. Or tap dancing the entire time trying to entertain everyone.
Yes. Someone else brought beautiful little tiny bars of organic chocolate and just literally the act of going around to 35 other guests at some point over the course of the weekend It makes people look towards each other. It gives them a tiny little sense of like, this is my gathering too. And so part of thinking about spending time together is finding ways to help people have a shared experience without needing to be the same. Another very simple thing is fun dress codes. Fun dress codes, meaning wear the single best thing in your closet. No shopping. Ooh, I love the no shopping. I once did this for a birthday party. 3 people showed up in their wedding dresses. Oh, that's killer. I know a woman who threw a no pants party in Chicago in her apartment. It was July. She didn't— her AC wasn't working. I think it was from like a Simpsons episode. People showed up in everything from bathing suits to skirts to dresses. Her father showed up in overalls and a good-natured fight broke out about whether or not overalls are pants. Like it was a total hit because there was shared context.
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