I've been asked to give ideas to plan a Christmas party for a large group, 200+ people. My husband is active national guard. I try to help out with the Family Readiness Group for his reserve soldiers and their families. We do a Christmas party every year, but want to add a little more fun to it. Most of the Christmas parties I've been to are smaller groups of 50 or less people. The activities we do there probably wont work with this large group. Has anyone been to a large party with any good activities, or has any great ideas? TIA

With that size crowd it's hard for me to definite activities what would work well. I think the obvious would be a DJ. Perhaps a moonwalk if kids are present.

Someone dressed up as Santa would be a big hit w/ kids, too.

I'm doing the same thing for DH's unit party, only for about half the people, so I don't know if my ideas will help. For the kids, we're decorating sugar cookies and letting them also decorate their own sacks (white paper lunch sacks), the sacks are for the pinatas. We're also having a visit from Santa.

We also have pinatas for the teens and one for the adults.

For the adults we will be doing a white elephant gift exchange (this can be done in smaller groups, just divide everyone up). Here's a cute poem/game to go with it that we will be using which eliminates some of the tension you sometimes find with a white elephant: http://www.sugardoodle.net/Stories_Thoughts_Poems/Christmas/A%20fun%20white%20elephant%20gift%20exchange%20poem.html

The local University has To-go catering where we order the food and they cook it, then we pick it up and serve buffet style. It's a lot cheaper than a fully catered meal. We're also getting some FRG members to donate supplies and baking for the cookies and decorating supplies. What we can't get donated, we will buy. We're just holding it in the gym of the armory so we have access to the kitchen and tables and the unit is letting us use their paper supplies (plates, napkins, etc).

To decorate the tables we're just covering with white butcher paper and running a ribbon down the center with maybe candy and crayons scattered on top to keep people occupied. HTH

We also have it in the gym. Maybe we'll divide the groups up and have seperate activities so people can interact more. Thanks for the ideas!

Karaoke is always fun.

Once for a party we had we set it up like a carnival for the kids. Like throwing hula hoops over large teddy bears, pitching softballs into milk cans, knock cans off pedestal with a softball, Throwing darts at balloons or playing cards. All the kids loved it. Most of the items for doing it were donated, went to lumber company and got styrofoam board to put the balloons and cards on. Overall, fairly cheap. We just gave out little favors to the winners, but you could do cookies, candy canes, fruit, also. Keeping the kids entertained is half the battle.