Entertaining > Decorating your Oscar Party

Putting on the Ritz.... Oscar

For an authentic-looking Oscar theme, choose either black and gold or black and silver as your colors.

Set the tone with your invitations. If you're planning well in advance, you can mail them, but e-mail invitations are also perfectly acceptable for your Oscar night. E-vite offers several Academy Awards invitation templates, and Windows Live Events also offers an Oscar party invitation (you'll find it under "House Parties" in the Templates section when creating your event).

Start your decorating outside the front door with rolls of red carpet (or maybe red vinyl) from curbside to the entry doors.

Sprinkle stars in all sizes over everything: entryways, tables, ceilings, walls, or tucked inside invitations.

Use life-sized cutouts or 8x10 photos of Hollywood legends around your party rooms to make guests feel they are truly in Tinsel Town. Be creative with props like director's chairs, cameras and lights.

Have a photographer available to take plenty of pictures to capture the magic of the evening. Fancy clothing and a festive atmosphere deserve to be documented and preserved. Create a photo backdrop, and encourage your guests to stop by to have a formal picture taken.

For more informal photographs recruit a friend or hire an amateur photographer to come dressed as the "stalking paparazzi." Guests will genuinely feel like celebrities with this camera-toting hound on the loose!

Play movie trivia. Put trivia questions in a basket or top hat, and let guests play during the commercials. Provide a list of movies and movie stars, and have guests match as many actors/actresses with the films they starred in, or have them try to match movie titles with the year the movie was released. Another fun game is to see who can name the most films that have won an Academy Award™ for Best Picture.

Play a Hollywood variation of 20 Questions. As each guest arrives, pin a star's name on his or her back. The goal for each guest is to find out who they are by asking only "yes" and "no" questions of the other guests. Limit each person to one question per guest. This is a great game to encourage mingling...

The Oscars can be a long evening so we suggest building the viewing of the entire broadcast into your party. Use our handy Oscar Pool Guide for a complete listing of the major awards categories. Have guests complete the pool prior to the start of the show. Throughout the evening, have each guest score their own sheet (or trade with others), and award a prize to the guest with the most accurate predictions at the end of the night.