Haute Hostess Christine Chiu's Guide To Throwing The Most Fabulous Fête

During stricter COVID shutdown, obviously I was on a million Zoom parties. So I was able to reflect on what I thought worked well and what didn’t work well. One of my friends had the most epic Zoom party I’ve ever experienced. It inspired me to kick it up a notch with my own Zoom birthday. Before her party she sent this big box of pre-party gifts that included blankets, tie-dye sweatshirts, a million snacks, basically like a slumber party together. And the theme was Friends, the TV show. So we log on to the Zoom and who opens the Zoom party? The Rembrandts! Singing the theme song! And then it was a lineup of every single comedian you could think of doing standup from their house. It was so well produced, so seamless, so funny. So I borrowed a couple of elements and took notes from that as far as having a production company do the Zoom party. I hired one for my own Zoom birthday.

What I’ve also learned is that it’s important for other people to see everyone else. First of all it’s interesting to see what people are wearing, or where they live, or what their Zoom background is. But it also keeps you engaged because you don’t want to be nodding off or doing something else. Or leaving your camera altogether.

For my own Zoom birthday it was “Christine’s Naughty or Nice Holiday Bake-Off.” I worked with Chris Ford who also did my “sex” party. We went from that to baking in my kitchen! But he did such a good job of branding the whole thing.

It was naughty or nice themed so for one part we were baking a holiday fruit cake and then the other part we were making a mean holiday cocktail. There was brunette Christine and blonde Christine, named Chrissy. There was an illustrator who drew both Christines and that branding was on everything, from the invites to the actual box they got, with all the ingredients and supplies.

And I love a little friendly competition. It was a bake-off and there was a prize. Everyone was doing it together and I had the production company film us in our kitchens... it was like a hybrid home cooking show. And it was a costumed function, so everyone had to dress either naughty or nice. I was surprised to see the split of friends - I thought it was going to be heavily nice because everyone’s shy but it definitely leaned towards the naughty and people really went for it in terms of costumes. And they had fun because I think they drank part of their ingredients beforehand.

We also broke up the cooking segments a lot with entertainment - naughty performers and nice performers singing holiday songs. We had these really hot guys singing a cappella...