We recently hosted our first tree trimming party and I thought I’d share a bit about how it went and what we did – mostly because I didn’t find a ton of guidance when I was searching for ideas for ours! You might be asking “what is a tree trimming party?” Great questions! Essentially, it’s a chance to host friends and family to help “trim” (decorate) the tree. I love the holiday season and Christmas and so I was all about this idea.
First things first – choose your date and time. We chose to host our party earlier in the month because in my opinion December just gets busier as the month goes on. Of course lots of other events were being held the same day we held ours, but we still had a great turnout. I think one thing we did that helped in a few ways, was that we chose to have a start time at 4pm. This also meant that we didn’t have to serve full on dinner – honestly, while I love to cook for others, I just didn’t have the time to pull together a huge dinner for 25 people – so a 4pm start was perfect. We let people know they could drop in and out whenever they needed and that worked well.
We sent out invites through evite for free and that was fine as well. I don’t love evite (I prefer Paperless Post) but it worked just fine for this event. One our evite, I asked guests to bring an ornament to help decorate the tree. After sending out our invites (we kept it to a relativity small list – close friends and family), the planning began. I spruced up our Christmas decorations this year – in part because I love Christmas but in part because I wanted our house to feel extra festive! As far as the menu, as I mentioned, we didn’t do full on dinner. Instead, here was our menu:
- Homemade spinach dip
- Charcuterie with a variety of Italian meats
- Fruit
- Chips and dip and salsa
- A variety of popcorn
- Honey soy meatballs
- Pizza bites
- A variety of desserts
We also served hot apple cider out of a crock pot (with rum on the side for spiking), plus plenty of beer and wine. As you can see below, the spread covered the table and I think it was the right amount of food – plenty of folks had dinner plans afterwards (or came late after an early dinner) so it worked well.
I played a holiday playlist from Pandora and had our guests place their ornaments on the tree as they arrived (we also had some ornaments for people to place on the tree – and the lights had already been placed). Once we had a critical mass and it was dark, we turned off the lights in the house and lit the tree.
We then turned the lights back on and let the party continue. It was so fun and relatively simple to put together – this will definitely be an annual tradition for us!
Have you hosted a Tree Trimming Party?
I didn’t know people did things like this. Glad you had fun and found a new tradition.
Now when you do this next year will people still bring ornaments again?
Yeah, I think so. A friend gave me the idea of buying a small tree where all the ornaments from this year will go!
Gorgeous! We’ve always had the tradition of decorating our tree with our kids. With two of them no longer living at home, we still make it a top priority for our family. So for now, the tree is up and brightly lit, but there are no ornaments to be found. Our youngest will be home from college tomorrow, and then on Sunday everyone will be here, fiances/girlfriends included, and we will (finally) get the tree decorated!
That sounds like it will be lovely!
This would be a great idea for new couples too who don’t have a lot of ornaments! It’s a great tradition to start! Thanks Courtney for sharing!
Yes, that’s right! A great, fun tradition to build an ornament collection 🙂
This is a great idea! I’ve never heard of a tree trimming party before but it sounds like a great idea for a festive holiday gathering.
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I t was really fun – I hope to do it often!