Christmas (Party) in November | Venue, Wish lists, and Photoshoots

Christmas is fast approaching! Do you know what that means? Christmas Parties!!!

I know it's still mid-November, but last weekend, my friends and I just had our Christmas Party. I know it's too early but I feels like a tradition now.

Back Story

Here are 3 main reasons why we do it this early:

1. Save the best for last first!
   If you're reading this and you are a working adult, I am 90% confident that you won't just have 1 Christmas Party this year. Office, multiple friend groups, and family Christmas Parties would demand your presence. Having all these Christmas parties ain't cheap.
   Will your 13th month pay survive? How far would you go? So before we go on to our obligatory parties, we wanted to have ours while we still have money.

2. People will be leaving for their provinces.
   Not everyone is from Cebu City. Others live in Bacolod and some parts in Mindanao. To ensure perfect attendance at this get-together, we celebrated it a little early.

3. A late friend's birthday
   Arlo is a very dear friend and he passed away a few years back. November 8, was his birthday. So we decided to celebrate our Christmas party around his birthday. What better way to honor his memory than to get together like the old times.

Every year, I constantly look forward to where the party is, what gift I'll be receiving, and our annual group picture. Allow me to share the experience.

Venue

The venue is what I look forward to the most. I try my best not to be too involved in the planning of the party. Part of me wants to be surprised as to where the party is going to be this year. Since our party is always an overnight thing, my friends try to put a little effort into the place selection.

This year, we got a place in Lapu-Lapu called "Alpha Diamond Exclusive HomeStay".

We stayed on the 3rd floor and it had 3 rooms for us to use. Which was more than enough for everyone to have a comfortable place to sleep. The indoors wasn't very spacious but it was enough for an intimate gathering. Some decorations to add flavor to the place, of course.

The floor above us was on another level (no pun intended). It has more amenities than you could expect an Airbnb place to have. It had outdoor tables, a swimming pool, and a pool table.

It had gym equipment, outdoor tents (with stuffed toys), and a karaoke machine! IT. WAS. PERFECT.

Photos below were grabbed from the Facebook Page of Alpha Diamond Exclusive Homestay. Someone got too excited and forgot to take pictures. 🤣 (https://bit.ly/3nlO7GK)

The only downside was, we were a little limited to our activities since the amenities floor was only open until 10 pm. It would have been perfect if we could spend the night on the rooftop with bottles of beer and late-night conversations.

Also, we were asked to lower our music and the merry-making noises which was a bummer. Since there were "kids" sleeping a floor below us. 🙄

Super Specific Wishlists

One tradition that I really love is how specific our wishlists are. For our wishlists we don't merely write down what we want, we also provide the Shopee/Lazada/Shein links of the specific item that we want.

So around Sept-Oct, everyone would already have something in mind and we compile them in a spreadsheet before we start drawing our Secret Santa.

We have been doing this every year but what made this year different is we listed down at least 3 items we wanted to receive, categorized according to tiers.

These tiers are according to price. Tier 3 (P500), Tier 2 (P1000), and Tier 1 (1,500 or more). This is to ensure the receiver's satisfaction without compromising the giver's budget. If the giver is extra generous, he/she could go for the more expensive wish item.

I thought there won't be much of the surprise factor when opening the gift since we made it very clear what we want but it was actually exciting since people would most likely expect the Tier 1 items. Let's just say, everyone was very generous this year. Everyone went home happy. 😁

Photoshoot

Every year we try to dress up for a theme. This year's theme was "party clothes" and it was open to interpretation. I am not really a fan of dressing up and thinking too much on what to wear so I just put on a button down shirt and a pair of short.

We were all asked to dress up since it is also an annual group photoshoot. So before dinner, we spend around 1.5-2 hours taking group and individual photos.

Sharing with you guys some of our photos.

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Official Group Photos

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Official Individual Photos_{My Entry}

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Exchanging Gifts_{and other photos that night}

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I hope what I shared gave you some ideas for your next Christmas party. I'd love to also know some of your Christmas Party "best practices."

Anyway, Advance Merry Christmas!