It is the weekend after graduation and graduates are starting to celebrate. “Grad parties” hosted by graduated seniors occur every year, during most weekends in June. “My grad party will be at my house. We will have sandwiches and cute graduation cookies with a lot of my friends and family there,” Grace Reynolds said.

Grad parties can be at any time of the day, but most have food of some sort. Depending on weather, the food can be anything from barbeque to tacos. After dinner, like a birthday, cake and dessert are customary. “I’m going to have Crumbl cookies and tacos. I really only care about the food,” Maura Hyatt said.

The parties can be themed, too. Depending on what a student likes, decorations and food may revolve around a theme. Sometimes, a theme gets thrown out the window though, and grads stick to simple décor. “My grad party was the day after prom. I didn’t really have a theme, but I decided that I really liked blue and white as a color scheme for the Grizzlies. And I knew I wanted flowers. So, I did a lot of flowers in my decorations,” Makenzie Powers said.

As fun as grad parties get, like all parties, planning them takes work. Graduates have to work around challenges and tedious details to make their party perfect. ““[The biggest challenge is] the theme, and colors. I’m going with red. Also, giving out invites, those take time; figuring out everybody’s addresses to send stuff to. Try not to plan it on the same day as [friends],” Hyatt said.

“Nobody warned me that your own grad party is a bit like babysitting because you’re just entertaining people,” Powers said. “I didn’t really eat at my party, maybe a couple of snacks, but I was running around talking to people. There’s just a lot of entertaining to do and I wasn’t prepared for that.”