Thanksgiving and the holiday season are fast approaching, which means a lot of people will be throwing parties, and as anyone who’s thrown any kind of bash knows, it takes a lot of time and money.
A new survey finds:
- Americans will spend about $1,422.65 a year on party planning.
- When it comes to a bash itself, folks throwing a party for 12 will spend, on average, $67.08 on alcohol, $71.20 on food and $58.49 on décor
In addition to the financial investment, folks spend a lot of time on their bashes, with the average host spending about 10 hours on a party in total. Those hours break down as follows:
- Planning - 2 hours and 5 minutes
- Shopping - 2 hours
- Setting up - 2 hours and 4 minutes
- Cooking - 2 hours and 7 minutes
- Tearing down/cleaning up - 1 hour and 58 minutes
And it isn’t always easy to be a good host, with 71% of people saying throwing a party is stressful. The survey finds that the worst thing a host can do is wait too long to serve food/drinks (39%), followed by:
- Ask me to mingle (34%)
- Only serve food with dairy/gluten etc. (34%)
- Clean too early (32%)
- Get drunk (30%)
- Cancel the party same day (30%)
- Apologize too much (30%)
- Rush everybody out the door (29%)
Source: SWNS Digital