Bring the fun with "Guest of Honor Trivia"

This past weekend we celebrated my best friend Katrina’s 30^th birthday and we thought it would be a great opportunity to share with you one of our favorite ways to bring the fun to any party.  Guest of Honor Trivia!! You can play this game at any occasion…birthday parties, graduation parties, or even bachelorette parties.  It’s a great way to celebrate your friend, while reminiscing about the good times you’ve had together.  There is really no limit to the type of game you can create.

We are lucky enough to have some incredible friends in our lives and we’ve been able to come up with many different games in the past. Two of our favorites were “Katie Law School Trivia” for when she graduated NYU and “Scott Nelson Trivia” on his 30^th birthday.  They both consisted of basic trivia questions about our friend read aloud to the party guests.  For “Trina Trivia” we decided to step it up a notch.

Trina Trivia Score Board

Karla, Katrina, & I after dinner. Katrina & I have known each other since 2nd grade, so there was a lot of questions to choose from.

Her birthday dinner was at a restaurant with about 12 people. We divided the group into two teams and played it Family Feud Style.  Instead of surveying 100 people, we simply asked questions that had multiple answers.  I read the question first and then the team whose turn it was would decide if they wanted to play or pass.  If they played and correctly guessed all the answers – they win that round. If they couldn’t guess them all before getting 3 strikes – the other team got a chance to steal their points! 

Team 2 getting the last answer correct and winning the round!!

This game required some extra props and input from the guest of honor.  We cut poster board into 11’’ x 14’’ rectangles to use as the answer boards.  We then used double sided tape and colorful paper to cover the answers.  (side note: the tape was stickier than I thought and after I pulled the paper off sometimes there would still be some covering up the answer, so when you do it at home, try not to put the tape right over the answer, it would be better if you put two pieces of tape on the ends) We printed out the questions and their answers so we knew which answers were behind which pieces of paper.  To be sure we were completely accurate we emailed the Birthday Girl ahead of time to get her answers.  

Some of our categories included:

    her family pets

    her celebrity crushes

    colleges she’s attended

    jobs she’s had

    cars she’s owned

    states she’s lived in

    wedding parties she’s been in

    countries she’s traveled

We then had a couple categories that centered around the people who were there:

    reasons she loves her boyfriend

    reasons she’s thankful for her parents & brother

    top 5 moments from college 

My favorite question included a visual aid.  We printed out all of our photobooth photos and the teams had to name the other people in the pictures. 

 

Team 2 seriously discussing what was the name of one of their family cats.

The whole game was a lot of fun. Everyone had a good time working together to remember the answers and a couple great stories were retold. 

When creating a game for your friend there are a couple things to keep in mind.

1. Your audience.  How big is the group? Can you divide them into teams or would it be more fun to just have everyone participate?
2. The location.  Will the party be at a house, restaurant, or club? You want to make sure it’s not too loud and everyone can be involved.
3. The length of the game.  If you make it too long, people can get disinterested.  If it is too short people might want more. We’ve found that between 10 to 20 questions is a good amount.
4. The questions.  When thinking of the questions, make sure you include topics that the majority of the people there would know the answer to.  It’s not fun if you make the questions too hard.  Include questions that highlight the reasons you love your friend.  Does she enjoy traveling?  What are her talents?  What is unique about her?  Think about some of your favorite memories, then turn them into questions.  Avoid bad memories, ex-boyfriends, or ex-girlfriends.  Keep things fun and positive.
5. The structure of the game.  Is there a game you love to watch on television?  You can really base your game off of any existing game.  Using “Jeopardy” rules or “Family Feud” rules makes it easier for everyone to understand the game.  It’s also a good idea to simplify them a little if possible. For example, in “Trina Trivia” instead of having two team members face-off at the beginning of each round to see who gets control, we just alternated turns.

That’s about all you need to know. If you are using props be as artistic as you want, but don’t stress about that part too much. The most important thing is to celebrate your friend and the reasons they are awesome!  Remember it is a game, so have fun.  We’d love to hear about the games you create, so when you do, don’t forget to leave a comment below.

Have a great week!!

This has nothing to do with "Guest of Honor Trivia" but I just had to mention that we killed it at a Karaoke bar later that night with a little "Juicy" by Biggie!! Two words: Crowd Pleaser!