Throw a 90s party for you and your friends with these totally rad tips!
As a person who was born in the 80s and grew up in the 90s, I can definitively say that my first decade on Earth was pretty dang amazing. Granted, I only lived 16 days in the 80s, but my point is, the 90s were freaking amazing, and if I could’ve been a teenager during that decade, I believe I could totally rock the big hair and layered looks that were so iconic.
When I think of the 90s, I think about how there used to be prizes at the bottom of cereal boxes, how I could watch Mary-Kate and Ashley everyday after school, how you had to buy a whole CD even if you only liked one song on it, how getting an Easy Bake Oven was the first step to becoming a baker, how you had to go to Blockbuster to rent a movie, how TV shows actually had fun and catchy theme songs and so many other things. If any of those things made you nostalgic, then I dare say it’s time for you to party like it’s 1999 with these awesome 90s party tips.
PHOTO BOOTH
There are so many different directions you could go when it comes to creating a photo booth backdrop for your 90s party. For an easy (and budget-friendly) backdrop, purchase a white sheet (I got a queen size) and some small bottles of bright-colored acrylic paints. I squeezed the paints while moving my hand around so the colors would splash onto the sheet in random places. You can also take a paint brush and splatter paint it. I left it for a few hours to dry before hanging it up.
If you want to purchase props, there are many packages available on Etsy. I chose to print out and create my own. I downloaded speech bubbles online and put some famous 90s sayings on them. A few popular sayings you could use for props and other decorations are:
— Totally rad
— As if
— Boo ya
— Rollin’ with the homies
— Talk to the hand
— Hip hop hooray
— Mo’ money mo’ problems
— Who loves orange soda?
— No duh
— Wassup?
I also printed out some photos with things that were popular in the 90s, like an old Super Nintendo controller, the original Gameboy and the All That TV show logo.
To create a cutout of a Polaroid camera, get a foam board and use an X-acto knife to cut a rectangle within the board. We also had a Polaroid camera that we used to take photos throughout the party.
BANNERS
I made three banners and hung them up in various places around the house. I printed out all of the letters I would need to make my banner in a font that I thought was 90s-esque. The one I used was called “Bubblegum.” I traced the letters onto colored cardstock and cut them out then I taped balloon string to the back of them. You could also hole-punch the letters and string yarn, balloon string or another type of string or ribbon.
The banners I made said “This party is off the hook” to go with the photo booth backdrop, “Gettin’ jiggy wit it” to hang on the mantle with the photo booth props and “I want candy.” Yes, I know that the song, “I Want Candy,” came out in 2000, but I wanted a cute sign for all of the 90s candy, which I’ll talk more about below.
There are so many fun options when it comes to making banners for your party. Pick out where you want to hang banners and make them using fun 90s phrases like the ones I shared above.
FOOD & DRINKS
I had so much fun planning out the food and drinks for my 90s party. Unfortunately, so many of my favorite snacks don’t exist anymore or are super hard to find in stores.
The Bagel Bites were definitely a hit. Admittedly, I used to not like them at all, but that was before I cooked them in the oven. They were all devoured during the party.
Another favorite was the Dunk-a-Roo Dip. Do y’all remember Dunk-a-Roos? It was basically like dipping cookies into a container of icing. For the party, I made funfetti dip and served it with animal crackers.
My roommate made some red velvet cupcakes, and to 90s them up, we cut out pictures of some 90s icons, taped them onto a toothpick and placed them into the cupcakes.
We served some chips and dip (can never go wrong), and Kyle donned himself the “Grill Meister” and grilled up some burgers and hotdogs. We also had Fruit Roll-Ups, Fruit by the Foot and Gushers, and as I mentioned earlier, I wanted a fun sign to go along with all of the candy I bought. Some ideas for candy popular in the 90s are:
— Ring Pops
— Pixi Stix
— Laffy Taffy
— Air Heads
— Blow Pops
— Tootsie Roll Pops
— War Heads
— Gobstoppers
— Baby Bottle Pops
— Pop Rocks
— Candy bracelets and necklaces
— Ouch Bubblegum
— Nerds
There were so many different options for drinks, so naturally, I went a little crazy buying my childhood favorites. We had Capri-Sun, Sunny D, Juicy Juice and grape and berry blue Kool-Aid Bursts. These options are sure to be popular with your guests. They certainly were with mine!
FOOD LABELS
In lieu of having regular paper food labels, use cassette tapes as your food labels. I went to a local thrift store and bought some cassette tapes for $1. I then spray painted them and used a permanent marker to write out the names of the food. For the chips and dip food label, I wrote “All that and a bag of chips.”
GIANT FORTUNE TELLERS
Fortune tellers were all the rage back in the 90s. I called them fortune tellers, but apparently there are other people who called them cootie catchers. I never heard them called that until recently, but nonetheless, I created two giant fortune tellers/cootie catchers using poster board to use for a drinking game.
Click here for an easy to follow tutorial on how to make one. For these fortune tellers, I wrote the names of some 90s icons on the outside. The pink one had female icons, and the green one had male icons. The inside was numbered 1-8, as per usual. On the inside, I wrote out rules for the drinking game. Some examples of rules I included are take a shot, everybody drinks, all girls/guys drink and choose somebody to take a shot.
To play, we passed the fortune tellers around and altered which one we were using so that no one could memorize what the rules under each number were.
BEER PONG “S” TABLE
I wanted to include a beer pong table at the party, but I wanted to do something fun with it to give it a 90s theme. Do you remember writing the letter “S” in a funky way using a bunch of lines? We decided to use neon pink duct tape to make a giant letter “S” in that fashion for the beer pong table. Click here for easy instructions on how to draw the S.
GAMES
You can’t have a 90s party without having some 90s card and board games. There are so many good ones! We had Monopoly, Life, Uno, Cluedo and Operation. Some other popular games were:
— Twister
— Mall Madness
— Hungry Hungry Hippos
— KerPlunk
— Sorry
— Trouble
— Girl Talk
— Connect Four
— Guess Who
— Mouse Trap
— Candyland
90s PLAYLIST
Of course, one of the best things about the 90s is the music. If you follow me on Instagram, you know that Kyle and I have a favorite local 90s cover band called the Hollow Decks, and we’ve seen them four times live with plans for a fifth. Every song they play is incredible, and most of them are included on my 90s playlist.
There are tons of fun ways to have a 90s-themed party. Throwing this party made me want to throw another one ASAP! Almost everyone came dressed up in their 90s best (flannel around the waist for days) and there wasn’t a single song that came on the playlist that anyone wanted to change.
What are some of your favorite things from the 90s?
