Italian Themed Dinner Party – Relief Society Birthday

Fun and creative ideas to throw a Relief Society Italian Themed Dinner Party! Post may contain affiliate links.

I have wanted to throw an Italian themed party for a while now. So when ideas for our Relief Society Birthday Celebration started heading that way, I couldn’t have been happier!

The Relief Society is the is the oldest and largest women’s organizations in the world (hence the 174th birthday). It’s the women’s group for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that I am blessed to be a member of.

Originally we were planning on throwing a simple birthday party complete with balloons and streamers. We wanted to keep preparations to a minimum so decided on an easy yet delicious menu of pizza and cupcakes.

And then in our meeting my friend suggested this…

rosemary.

She wanted to have a few pots of rosemary down the center of the table. That started me thinking about old wine bottles…

Well, one thing let to another and before we knew it our ‘simple’ birthday turned into a full scale Italian themed Dinner Party. Of course, I was all about that!

My favorite part of the brainstorming/planning session was when I exclaimed, “Oh, and I have a brick wall!” And my other friend looked at me and said, “Of course you do!” 🙂

I was stumped with how to go about tying this “Italian themed dinner party” in with Relief Society. Lots of times ladies have cute sayings that relate to an aspect of Relief Society and goes along with their theme. I racked my brain for days but then decided… BAHHH! We were just going to have a fun Italian-themed dinner and that was quite alright!

The Simple Italian themed Decorations

The tables were lined with rosemary pots, old glass bottles filled with flowers, a string of lights (we had the lights off to help with the ambiance), and a pretty Relief Society printable (found here) which we also had on each of the ladies’ plates to take home.

My chalkboard signs came in real handy for this party, especially the lighted one we made for our White Elephant Bingo Party.

Yea, I could really go for one of those cupcakes right now…

My Italian postcards I never sent finally got some use! I hung them up with small clips on a string of twine.  The wine bottles we created for our Roaring 1920’s Party made a guest appearance.

An easy yet ingenious idea my friend had was instead of having several different pizzas to choose from, to simply have three varieties of pizzas. This eliminated the need for another table as we just stacked duplicates and hid the extras underneath the table.

When deciding on drinks my friend stated right away “Pizza just isn’t complete without my carbonated beverage.” So soda it was! We of course also had water which was served in this adorable Mason Jar Dispenser.

My Tower of Pisa chalkboard art received a few compliments. Too bad I’ll be erasing it soon for our next party!

Relief Society Birthday Celebration

We began the evening with eating and mingling, while other ladies came trickling in. After dinner, we played a fun get-to-know you game called “I never”, which is a favorite of mine.

To play, all the chairs are arranged into a circle and everyone has a seat except one person who stands in the middle. The person in the middle says one thing that she has never done before, like “I have never dyed my hair” or “I have never been skydiving”. Everyone that has done it, has to stand up and find an empty chair and the person in the middle hurries to find a seat as well. Whoever is left without a seat stands in the middle and says something that they have never done and the game continues until you decide to stop.

The ladies had a LOT of fun with this game. It helped everyone get to know each other a bit better. After the game, we gathered back into our “Italian Bistro” and ate cupcakes. Yum! While everyone was eating, I shared some prepared thoughts on the importance of Relief Society.

Everyone had a great time! The sisters (that’s what we call each other) loved the ambiance we created! The Italian music completed it all (thank-you Pandora!). Our goal for our birthday celebration was for everyone to simply have a good time. I’m pretty sure we were successful in that!

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