Ideas For Throwing The Ultimate Prince-Themed Party

I threw a Prince-themed “Diamonds and Pearls” party. I couldn’t find a website that had lots of good ideas for this all in one place, so I thought I’d write down what I did so that others may benefit!

Games / Entertainment

Prince Trivia

An easy way to kick things off while people are still arriving / aren’t very drunk yet. We did a quick 7-question version and gave the winner a prize. Easy enough to run this old-school with pens and paper.

Here are some general tips for running trivia.
You can Google for Prince trivia questions!

Totally Campy Prince Impersonator

We used Devon Cass. He was super fun!

“When Doves Cry”

Materials
Purple Tennis Balls
Dove Beanie Babies
2×3 Wood
1/4″ Plywood
Wood Stain
Silver Sharpie

Instructions
I built this fair-style throwing game — it was pretty basic but worked! If I were looking for ways to improve it, I would try to find some light sand bags for throwing — the balls bounced everywhere, and I tried it with cornhole sandbags but they’re really heavy and tend to shake the entire setup too much (especially if you’re doing this with grown-ups who can throw hard.)

“Pin The Mustache On Prince”

Materials
Blindfold
Mustache Magnets plus super magnets (to help the mustaches stick better!)
24×36 Prince Poster
Magnetic whiteboard or steel sheet metal
(You could also do this with a cork board and push pins!)

Instructions
Just like pin the tail on the donkey…. blindfold your player and give them the mustache to pin onto Prince!

“Little Red Corvette” Bowling

Materials
Little Red Corvette
Bowling Pins

Instructions
I actually didn’t quite get this to work, but I think it’s a solid concept. The idea is to set up bowling with a toy car. The problem I ran into was that the little red corvette I ordered made it too easy to knock over the bowling pins I ordered (which were hollow plastic and super light.) If you want to make this work, you would need to find heavier/bigger bowling pins that aren’t so easy to knock over.

Photo Booth

Everyone always loves a photo booth. Ours featured a purple umbrella with “Purple Rain” wired into it with fishing wire — super cute!

Setting up a DIY photo booth is a pretty extensive topic that’s been covered by other people — Google away!

Video Booth

We set up a video booth with a large green screen that allowed you to dance in a Prince music video. We did this with Apple’s built-in photo booth software, which allows you to set your own videos as backgrounds! You basically just need a green screen+lights, and then a relatively powerful mac with keyboard/mouse and display so that people can see themselves!

Setting up a green screen is a whole… thing. Very important to get the lighting right (there are tons of resources to help you with this online — Google it!) Also we found that it’s critical to have people standing a good distance in front of the green screen. If they’re too close it just doesn’t work.

Decor

Since the theme was “Diamonds and Pearls,” I basically took all of my decor ideas from the Diamonds and Pearls music video.

Lighting

I originally wanted an enormous crystal chandelier, but settled for a bunch of smaller ones once I found out that giant crystal chandeliers are really, really f-ing expensive.

For extra lighting, I built lighting panels from a 2×3 wood structure with fairy lights strung up and down it, covered with a basic white Ikea shower curtain to diffuse the light, and a plain white Ikea regular curtain with black lines sharpied onto it – you can kind of see this in the second photo. It was basically meant to look like the steel windows in the Diamonds and Pearls video… which it kind of did, in the end.

Marble Columns

I recreated the marble columns from the music video using these great cardboard columns wrapped in marble wrapping paper.

Crystal Curtains

For the sparkle factor, I created a huge crystal curtain from bulk crystal for our garage door, and tied the crystal strands into bunches with white tulle ribbon. The idea was something like what’s pictured. This was honestly a LOT of work and maybe something that would be better purchased pre-hung.

Gold Chaise Lounge

For party reclining, and to add a luxurious ambiance, we faux-“reupholstered” a chaise that I found on Craigslist for $30 with what turned out to be a pretty nasty shade of gold chair covers that were about $2 online. I’d actually recommend going to an actual fabric store and looking at gold fabrics if you’re gonna do this.

For that added 80s je ne sais quois we hot-glued pearls onto the chaise for trim.

Piano Bar

This was possibly the most ambitious decor project. I found a grand piano free on Freecycle (this is easier than you might think!) I had it moved by piano movers ($250.)

I gutted it by basically cutting all the strings (CAREFULLY — put a towel over them and wear safety goggles, because they are under a LOT of tension and can/will snap back and hit you!) and unscrewing the piano harp and removing it. Note that the harp is VERY heavy — you will need at least two people to remove it.

Then I cleaned up the case, sanded it, refinished the outside with gloss black enamel spray paint, and lined the inside with thick black plastic so that it was essentially waterproof. Oh, and created a replacement, longer stick to hold up the lid so that it would be easier to access the beverages (the original was about 2′ long, the replacement was 3′ long.)

Final step: fill with beer / cider / water, throw some ice over it all! And add some submersible tealights for better illumination.

Cocktails

I mixed two custom cocktails — both of these were summery and delicious!

“Raspberry Beret”

Basically a raspberry version of this awesome recipe!

Ingredients (for one drink)
3â„4 oz. raspberry jam
3â„4 oz. fresh lemon juice
1 1â„2 oz. vodka
3 oz. prosecco

Instructions
In a cocktail shaker, combine the jam, lemon juice, and vodka with ice. Shake vigorously for 15 seconds and then strain into an ice-filled rocks glass. Top with prosecco.

To make massive quantities of it, simply multiply the ingredient volumes by total number of drinks you want to make. Pre-refrigerate all ingredients to make up for not shaking it with ice.

If you’re going to put it in a drink dispenser (recommended!), combine the jam and lemon juice first, and then STRAIN the mixture to get rid of all the seeds and things that could clog the dispenser before combining with vodka and prosecco.

“Purple Rain”

Slightly modified version of this awesome recipe!

Ingredients (for one drink)
2 oz. frozen blueberries (yeilds 1 oz. juice)
2 oz. gin
1/2 oz. lemon juice
4 oz. ginger beer
Tiny drop blue food coloring

Instructions
Convert the blueberries into blueberry juice by cooking them in a saucepan or (if you’re scaling up) large pot for about 20 minutes, or until they are completely defrosted and have become mushy.

Strain the blueberry concoction to harvest the juice only. I used 12lbs of Wyman’s Wild Blueberries, which yielded 100oz of strained juice.

In a cocktail shaker, combine the blueberry juice, lemon juice, and gin with ice. Shake vigorously for 15 seconds and then strain into an ice-filled rocks glass. Top with ginger beer.