What if the real Valentines were the friends we made along the way.
Instead of Galentine's Day this year, I wanted to combine my desire to throw a very pink dinner party with the New Year's resolution of making new friends. I asked each of my guests to invite one friend that none of the rest of us knew. There's nothing I love more than friends of friends becoming friends, so I figured this could be a fun start!
We ended up with 13 people in my New-York-sized apartment. It was a tight fit but I think it worked for the intimate dinner party vibe. I invited my neighbors as my ~new friends~ and we had a collection of college friends and coworkers as other people's invites!
So the planning process... If there's one thing you should know about me it's that I love a good Canva project. So I started this whole party with a little inspo board on Canva.
You'll see not everything is updated (guest names, etc) and we didn't actually end up doing everything on here. I feel like I over-plan and then the day of the actual party I self-edit based on a time-crunch and what feels too over the top. The main things that didn't make it on here were the champagne and strawberries (laziness) and the champagne & diet coke (I tried it and it's super mediocre??). I also ended up ditching the Figs in a Blanket appetizer because the grocery store didn't have figs or cocktail wieners (Whole Foods is so mid when you need specific stuff for a recipe).
I rented tables and chairs for the event since there's just no way I'd have access to them otherwise in NYC. It was super reasonable and came out to only like $115 including delivery and pick-up. I got everything from @customcraftsandrentals who I would highly recommend!
For the tablescape, I tried to keep costs relatively low and only buy things that were reusable since I'm trying to be more ~thoughtful~ around my consumption. I ended up getting 2 white tablecloths from Home Goods for only $16.99. (This also made the heartbreak of someone spilling red wine all over one of them much more bearable.) I also love using 4-5" wide ribbon down the center of a table instead of a runner as a lower-cost option. This was also perfect for a folding table that tends to be a bit narrower than a regular dining room table. I threw some confetti I bought off of Amazon on top to give it a bit more flair.
I bought a few balloons on Amazon and got them blown up at the local party store. Helium is surprisingly expensive(??) so I only got 6 of the heart balloons in white/pink/rose gold and then 6 of the clear balloons with gold glitter.
Even though it was Palentine's Day, I still wanted to have the ~romance~ of pretty candles all along the table. I've been wanting gold candlesticks forever but had trouble finding ones that were good quality but not a bajillion dollars. I found this vintage set of three on Ebay for only $35 and I love them! They even came in the original box and are in great condition from the 80s ("vintage"). Then the "votives" are actually XL shot glasses I found at TJ Maxx for $4.99 for the whole box! Was a way better deal than the votives I saw on Amazon and they perfectly fit a tea-light.
The flowers are in these amazing black and gold glasses I got from my great aunt Dorothy. She used to serve us white wine out of these little cups but they were perfect for the spray roses I picked up from the grocery store.
Okay, also how many wine glasses do people actually own? I think I started the night with 6 "nice" glasses, 6 random glasses from vineyard tastings, and then I needed to fill out the remaining spots. I ended up using these fun vintage beer glasses I have from my grandparents that have gold rims and ribbons all over them. I think they're from the 1940s and since they're fluted I figured they'd be fine for wine. They added a romantic vibe to the glassware and people loved them.
We drank literally 12 bottles of wine across the 13 of us (whoops). I think we actually achieved the "drink me out of house and home" stage because at the end I had not a single bottle of red wine left in my apartment. I made little wine charms for everyone's glasses using some beads and rings I found on Amazon. I figured this way I could change out the words for every occasion! This time I went with some ~flirty~ vibes and had things like slut, zaddy, twat, etc.
I feel like (low-key) this was a good ice breaker too because everyone got to have a laugh when they first got through the door and show their personality a bit. I will say though, be careful with what beads you buy because the little colorful ones were so small they'd go inside the letters so I had to buy some rounds big beads to break it up.
Okay so for the menu... another thing you should know about me is I don't cook. It's not that I can't cook...I just don't get any joy from it. "So Emma, why would you throw a dinner party?" Great question. Let's just say I love the vibes of a dinner party but I don't actually want to feed anyone. That's where Matt and Chris come in. The boys came over a bit early and helped me make all the food.
For appetizers we did dates stuffed with Boursin and wrapped in prosciutto. These were SO easy to make and definitely a crowd pleaser. I also ended up repurposing the puff pastry I bought for the ~figs~ in a blanket into that basic betch thing where you just wrap it around a big piece of brie. I also had this cherry sauce left over from the breakfast box at Kyu so I put that on top of the brie before covering it.
The rest of the menu was basically all of my favorite things:
Caesar Salad
Garlic Bread
Spicy Vodka Rigatoni (Scheck Eats)
Chicken Cutlets
Chris was a #hero and fried all the chicken cutlets and made the vodka sauce and pasta. I bought fresh pasta from Raffetto's and let's just say... they told me I needed 1lb of pasta for every 4 people and idk who they're feeding but I definitely only needed half of that. The Caesar salad I went lazy style with and bought Newman's Own dressing because I'm a pleb and the only ~fancy~ thing about it was that we grated our own parmesan... Matt made the garlic bread and idk what his secret is but it was divine.
Now as much as I don't cook, I do love to bake. I wanted to do a chocolate cake for the ~Valentine's Vibe~ of it all but also I feel like everyone and their alcoholic mother is on an espresso martini kick in NYC lately, so I wanted to incorporate that into dessert. I ended up making this Espresso Martini cake that was delicious. I totally messed up the icing because I didn't order enough mascarpone, so it wasn't as thick as it was supposed to be. I threw in more icing sugar and then because it was super sweet I ended up just using less icing on the whole cake. It had that icing sugar texture too where it hardens a litttttle bit on the fridge. Because the cake had the bitterness from the vodka and espresso I actually think this worked out pretty well. I just threw some Dove chocolates I had laying around on top to make it cuuute. We also made little espresso martini shots to have before dessert that were delish.
So that was Palentine's Day! Everyone had so much fun. We ate well, we drank (very) well, and we all got to meet some new people. At one point we did do the very cheesy activity of having everyone introduce their guest with a fun fact about them and how they met. We were all properly lubricated at that point so it wasn't awkward AF and was kind of funny at that point.
I loved this party and hopefully I can do it again next year (especially now that I have all these heart decorations laying around).
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