Ready for an obscure, yet fantastic group gathering to get everyone hyped about your upcoming trip? Host a drunk (or not) PowerPoint Party! This is so nerdy and so me, but I have hosted three of these things and they are hilariously fun. Most recently we hosted one on the Sunday before Christmas to get our family pumped for Ireland and my parents killed it. Killed. It. I had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard at my dad yelling every word of his 72pt font slides. I'll share a little bit about how to plan one of these and consider this your pre-game for a much more serious planning post coming soon.

So how do you go about planning this glorious event? First, pick your topic. We have done this twice for traveling and just set the topic broadly at the country level. When we went to Europe for friendcation, we assigned a country to each person and they took it wherever they wanted. For this event, we all stuck to Ireland. An important thing to note - have everyone keep the specifics of their presentation SECRET. This only increases the hilarity and surprise.

Once you, the party planner, have the topic set, send an email out to everyone with the rules. Here are the rules I like to follow:

Each person has 5 minutes to present their PowerPoint to the group on whatever related topic they choose.
The presenter is not allowed to time themselves, an audience member keeps track of time.
If the presenter goes OVER 5 minutes, they must take a shot (or a car bomb in our case).
The closest presenter to 5 minutes, without going over, receives a small prize.
At the end, there is a secret vote for the “best” presentation of the night and another small prize is given out.

Before you get started, discuss who will set up the tech for the night. We all used one laptop connected to the TV and either loaded the presentation from a flash drive or logged into our google accounts to present on Google Slides. Either way, have everyone know your plan so the transition is smooth between individuals.

Have snacks and drinks! We stuck to only Irish beverages for the night and it was fun to mingle and hang out before jumping into the slides so everyone felt warmed up. Drinking during the presentations is encouraged if you are in fact advertising this as a drunk PowerPoint party.

Small prizes make it fun! Socks are always a favorite, and I provided two pairs of leprechaun socks for the winners. I also brought green beads for everyone to wear because why not.

So here are some of the “themes” from our night of Irish fun - the origins of the Guinness Book of World Records, the mythical fairy forts all across Ireland, fun facts about Guinness beer, and I (obviously) presented my itinerary through gifs and photos. It was kind of cheating, but I am who I am. Itineraries are my jam.

This was a perfect way to get everyone excited for our upcoming vacation in May and spurred some new ideas for destinations and sightseeing. If you have a fun group of family or friends, consider a drunk PowerPoint party for your next gathering! And please oh please let us know how it goes. Check back soon for a much more serious post on our overall planning process for this trip!

Featured