With the beginning of every June comes the beginning of Pride Month. From parades to late-night parties, celebrating Pride Month has always been festive in its honoring of the LGBTQIA+ community.
Carefree dancing, upbeat music, and bright colors have quickly become the trademark of a typical Pride gathering. For hosts of at-home Pride parties, it can be difficult to replicate the energy of Pride parades while honoring the history behind the historic month. To make hosting a little easier, here are four simple and entertaining themes to use for your next Pride gathering that focus on the reasons for celebrating Pride Month.
Pride Month Trivia
Looking to mix up a Pride party at home? Hosting a Pride Month trivia night is an easy, interactive, and educational way to get your friends talking. Gather your friends in the living room and section them into teams to invite connection.
You can easily look up Pride Month trivia questions online. If you prefer to make your own questions, make sure to incorporate a diverse range of topics, such as historical facts, LGBTQIA+ icons, and the queer community’s relationship with food.
Decorate your living room with rainbow-colored streamers and low lighting for a carefree atmosphere that will surely contrast the intensely-competitive vibe of trivia night. As for refreshments, keep it easy with canned drinks — think prebiotic sodas and seltzers — and bowls of chips and dip for mid-trivia snacking.
LGBTQIA+ Movie Marathon
For a more lowkey event, invite your friends over for a movie marathon featuring classic LGBTQIA+ movies — Brokeback Mountain (2005), Love, Simon (2018), or Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), to name a few.
This event needs limited decor, but make sure you have comfy couches, blankets, and pillows to lounge on. For a movie marathon, popcorn will always be the ultimate snack — try to buy popcorn seasonings for different flavors for each new round of snacking. Buy the movies online to watch on your TV or laptop, lay back, and enjoy the movies.
“Drag Brunch” At Home
Drag brunches are one of the most celebratory and beloved queer cultural events. While you probably won’t be able to bring an actual drag brunch into your home, a solid effort at honoring the queer tradition can be achieved by eating brunch while watching RuPaul’s Drag Race.
For brunch, consider serving bottomless mimosas, since they are typically served at drag brunches. Food can be as casual or fancy as you can make it — waffles or eggs Benedict both work fine — just make sure it’s brunch-y. To capture the essence of a drag brunch at home, make sure all of your guests are dressed to the max: everything glitzy, glamorous, and brightly-colored are to be worn in the spirit of a true drag brunch.
Pride Flag Platters & Dress As Your Flag
The trend of “platter parties” — where every guest brings a differently-themed board of food to an event — has long passed since its debut on the Internet years ago, but it was never just a trend to me. Platter parties are perfect because you can do them at any time, and when throwing a Pride party at home, versatility is key.
This pride flag platter party (try to say that five times fast.) invites each guest to make a platter with colors of foods from their pride flags. For example, if you’re bisexual, your platter should only contain blue, purple, and pink foods — colors that aren’t naturally occurring for the most part, so get creative. Food items like candy, cookies, and fruits are often found on these colorful platters.
An easy way to incorporate a little more Pride spirit into your Pride Month platter gathering is to install a dress code where guests can dress in the colors of their flags. This way, your guests can match their platters.