Darren's 23rd Birthday Bash

Last night was Darren's 23rd birthday party.  For those of you that don't know, there were WEEKS of planning that went into this! Seriously, He and I have been discussing details for this party daily, for the past 2-3 weeks.  Somewhere along the line I became Darren's official "party planner" because I was organizing everything and making sure we got everything covered. There were many emails, many lists, and many trips to the store, but it was all worth it because the party turned out amazingly great!

Funny enough, it hasn't rained in Houston but maybe one time all summer, and the day of Darren's party there was a massive monsoon type storm right when the party was supposed to begin.  Once the rain let up a little people started coming and the party picked up from there.  At one point Darren counted about 80 people there. That's awesome!

Darren had rented out The Clubhouse at The Calais at Courtlandt Square. The location was BEAUTIFUL! Perfect for this type of evening cocktail party.

One of the biggest hits of the party was the candy bar. We had gone back and forth on whether or not to do this because of the expense, but in the end Darren decided he wanted to.  He had this great idea to have a candy bar with cellophane bags so people could snack on candy and take a bag home as a party favor. This was a HUGE hit! Everyone loved it! I seriously went to almost 10 different stores looking for bowls that would be suitable, but not to expensive, for this purpose and finally I found the perfect ones.  Here you can see the candy bar that was at the entrance to the party room.

For 3 hours people had cocktails, visited with friends, listened to music, and snacked on finger foods.  Darren looked like he was just soaking up every minute of it. I'm so glad he had so much fun! There was definitely a lot of hard work put into it, but it was obviously totally worth it.

What was really wonderful was how many people drove in from out of town for this party. There were guests from Austin, Dallas, San Antonio etc.  Some of my favorite people came into town for the party, so that made it all the better for me!

At 10:30 I had Darren make the announcement that people needed to start heading out and that we would all meet up in a bit at one of the bars in midtown.  At this point I started to get everything packed up.  It took 3 solid hours to decorate and get this party put together, and it took 30 fast paced minutes to get it packed up and cleaned. Many thanks to Kristen and Missy who helped me load all the stuff into cars and get everything taken care of while Darren was entertaining his guests.  Their help sure made the work go by much faster.  After we got everything cleaned up we headed over to Red Door and met up with a lot of the party people on the roof, where we spent the rest of the evening.  What a fun night!

As a totally unnecessary thank you for being his "party planner", Darren bought me the CUTEST new wristlet from Coach! I am absolutely in LOVE with this thing! Look how cute it is:

So, overall the party was a huge success! Everything went smoothly (despite the rain at first), and everyone, including Darren, seemed to have a wonderful time! I've been so busy doing all this party planning I'm not entirely sure what I will do with my time now. It's been a lot of fun!  For all your party planning needs you can now call me, the "party planner extraordinaire" haha :)

Side note: I completely forgot to bring my good camera and didn't remember until we were almost there, so it wasn't worth going back to get it. These were all taken with my point and shoot, so the quality is not nearly as good.  Oh well.