Old Hollywood Glamour Party Premieres

To celebrate our premiere of Grisly Grisell, we hosted an Old Hollywood Glamour Party. We had a blast and our audience was quite impressed with our party throwing abilities. If you are a moviemaker you can throw this sort of party for your next red carpet premiere.

Premieres are usually in the evening, but a matinee can be a huge success as well. Feel free to adapt to your own needs but for reference, our Old Hollywood Glamour Party itinerary looked like this:

• 5:30 - Theater doors are open and guests trickle in for an hour before the party starts. Socialize with your guests during this time. 
• 6:30 - Director gives a speech. For our Grisly Grisell Premiere, Mary Bowen pre-recorded and edited a speech with slides so that the audience was not bored during her 18 minute talk.  
• 7:00 - Start your movie!
• 8:00 - After the movie guests gather in the lobby and want to talk all about the production. We reserved a restaurant so we could extend the party. Remind guests that there will be appetizers and cake at the separate party location where there will be several hours to visit. Since we have a rather large crew, the director and the assistant director stayed behind at the theater while the producer and the rest of the crew welcomed the others at the restaurant.
• 10:00 - Guests depart. Of course, the party can last as long as you are up for. We usually don't go to bed after premieres until 1:00 or 2:00am

We went with free admission and made a beautiful donations can. Between donations and our silent auction, we made more money at the premiere than selling tickets would have brought in. We highly recommend free admission and passing the hat.

Close silent auction items every half hour of the party by making an announcement 10 minutes before closing each item, notifying your guests that this is their last chance to make sure they still have the highest bid. This gets more bids on your items. I highly recommend bringing your director's megaphone so that everyone can hear you.

What To Serve At Your Old Hollywood Glamour Party

Plan to serve hor d'oeuvres and cake to celebrate your accomplishment and to thank your guests for coming. You don't need to plan a whole meal for the afterparty, just a little something. If you show your movie at 6:30, chances are most people have already eaten dinner, so hor d'oeuvres or appetizers are perfect!

At the after-party, we ordered one appetizer per table and guests ordered their own drinks and food in addition to what we provided. The restaurant allowed us to serve a Costco cake during the party with our own supplies.

As a premiere after party is a little bit like a wedding reception, you want everything to be very elegant and nice. A cake with the movie title on it is a perfect accent to this party. 

Old Hollywood Glamour Party Feeling

Menu

Hor d'oeuvres
Costco cake

Party Budget

$400 - $700

Shopping List

• Black, white, & gold glitter
• Red carpet
• Carpet tape
• Eiffel Tower vase
• 18" ostrich feathers
• Bouquet holder

• Plastic popcorn boxes
• Roses
• Oasis foam
• 18" gold star
• 12" jute placemats

Think "glamour" when you decorate for your Old Hollywood Glamour Party. Red, gold, and black should dominate your decorating colors.

Beautiful centerpiece bouquets, an elaborate Eiffel Tower Ostrich Plume, even a glitzy donation box, will make your party pop with excitement.

Don't forget to encourage your guests to wear formal attire.

Big Hollywood premieres are always formal affairs. We wore formal attire to be sure our guests who dressed up felt comfortable, but most people wore their Sunday best with a few wearing nice casual clothes. 

You can make a beautiful and elegant popcorn centerpiece for your old Hollywood glamour party premiere with:

• Hard plastic popcorn boxes
• Roses (or any flower kind you want for your bouquet. As Grisly Grisell takes place during the War of the Roses we had no other choice.)
• Oasis foam
• 18" gold star
• Black, white, and gold glitter
• 12" jute placemats

Soak the oasis foam in a sink full of cold water. Once they are fully submerged, they are ready for the arrangement. You will want to start this at least 30 minutes before you arrange the flowers because it takes a while for the foam to absorb the water.

Once your foams are ready, place them in the popcorn boxes. Cut them to make them fill the entire bottom of the boxes. Arrange your flowers into the foam.

Arrange the feathers in the bouquet holder and place it in the vase. Tah-dah! Eiffel Tower ostrich feather decoration! Place somewhere prominent in your venue for showing the movie (like next to the donation box).

Roll out the red carpet to really give your party that certain Hollywood feel. Carpet tape is a fantastic way of adhering your carpet to the ground so that it doesn't bunch up or trip anyone.

Old Hollywood Glamour Party Fun

Producer Kathleen with family at our Grisly Grisell Premiere

Of course, the highlight of your Old Hollywood Glamour Party premiere will be showing your movie.

Host a silent auction for your guests during the party. Items could include locally donated items as well as props and costumes from your movie.

Ask businesses for donations about 2 weeks before the event. That gives them more time to decide which items to donate and if they are able to donate.

Country swing dancing is popular in our town so we danced at the after party. Although you don't need to insist on dancing, provide a dance floor and music for guests who like to dance.

Conveniently, there was a juke box at our venue so we just put someone in charge of it and the music was loud enough for all of the guests to enjoy. Even the waitress was dancing and told us we had great music taste!

If you want to see more pictures from our Old Hollywood Glamour Party view our Grisly Grisell premiere page.

Another special component that we added to our party was giving the rose bouquets to special guests to take home. This is a very nice gesture to give to someone special!