When you’ve got lots of friends, trying to keep up with them all can sometimes lead to you booking in dinner dates 6 months in advance.
A quicker way to touch base with your friends would be to see them all at the same time… but then there’s a problem…
Couple A doesn’t know Couple B, and Couple C doesn’t know either of them… in fact the only thing they have in common is you, which means you’re reluctant to have them all around together as you know, as host, you’ll be running between them all night trying to keep everyone happy and maintain the conversation.
In fact, rather than it being a nice catch up, it’d end up feeling more like a wedding, where the only thing in common is the bride or groom and you all end up making small talk with strangers…
Fear not! We have the solution that will make your entertaining nightmares go away!
Not only can you see all your friends at the same time, but that awkward need to find person appropriate small talk will vanish and you’ll be able to relax as host and just have a great time catching up.
The answer is, of course, to host a murder mystery dinner party!
Murder mystery dinners are ideal getting to know you ice breakers and are perfect for those dinner parties where you know couples don’t already know each other.
During the evening everyone becomes a new character so even if some couples know each other already, everyone is in the same boat as they all have to find out each other’s new personality.
The game structure ensures that everyone feels equally involved and no one is missed out of the conversation. There are none of those “awkward pauses” that can develop, as the flow of the evening progresses everyone from round to round and conversation to conversation.
Between the rounds guests can chat amongst themselves, and as the game has already broken much of the ice, you’ll find this conversation flows much more easily. But if it doesn’t, you always have the option to move swiftly on to the next round!
When we moved house 15 years ago, we used murder mystery dinner party games as a way of getting to know people quickly. The games meant we could get to know groups of people together at one time and also insert ourselves into pre-existing friendship groups without any awkwardness. The mystery dinner parties meant we could find out quickly who we gelled with without having to laboriously cover small talk and historical background with new faces. Instead we found out what we all found funny and what their personalities were like before we delved too deeply into personal information.
The added bonus was that with a murder mystery there was a set “end” to the evening. It meant no one was nervous about open ended party socialising with strangers. At the conclusion of the mystery, people could take their cue and leave if they wanted to, or if things were going well they could just keep on drinking and chatting.
We found lots of new friends through mystery dinner party playing. And as our friendships grew, we found we were inviting friends of friends along to the dinner evenings and meeting lots of new faces. Within a year of moving house, we had a wealth of friendships with neighbours, work colleagues, church friends, and more importantly quite a number of these people who wouldn’t ordinarily have met had also made friends with each other so we could invite them all around as a group again to something less structured.
These days, when we realise we’ve not seen people for a while and that there aren’t enough weekends in the year, we just start planning another mystery get together.
The only stress is making sure we have enough dinning chairs for the size of parties we want to host!
