Ultimate Guide to Hosting a Youth Banquet

If you are looking for a special event that your young people will love, why not organise a youth banquet? Your guests will love the opportunity to wear their best dresses or suits and feel like royalty for a luxurious meal they’ll never forget.

Very rarely do young people get to attend a 4-course meal at which they can wear fancy dress, laugh, and enjoy being waited on hand and foot.

In this post, you will learn all the details that go into organising a youth banquet, such as choosing the theme, invitations, decorations, games, food, and more! Plus enjoy plenty of free printables to make your job as simple as possible!

And the best part is this meal only costs your teens $15 NZD or $8.50 USD a person!

This guide is extensive and will give you great tips to adapt so you can use what you already have on hand. The event I’ll be referencing hosted 17 guests, and had 2 volunteer cooks, plus 3 awesome waiters.

The Ultimate Guide to Hosting a Youth Banquet

Invitations

Once you’ve decided you will be hosting a youth banquet your first point of action will be to start sending invitations or advertising to your youth group.

To do this you will want to decide on a theme, helping to keep all your stationary cohesive.

The theme I decided on for this event was a soft blue with florals and gold.

If your theme is similar then this post has everything you’d need!

The above invitation is completely free to be edited through Canva and downloaded, as are all the other corresponding resources for this banquet!

This template can also be edited to fit different color schemes if you like the style of the invitation and know a little bit about editing in Canva.

To access the Editable Template click the Image below.

Decorations

Once you know your theme and color scheme, you will want to begin organising your table layout and decorations.

As this is a dinner event, there are certain necessary items such as plates, cutlery, napkins, and glasses. For these items, I recommend taking account of what you already have available and using that as much as possible.

Tables & Tablecloths

The table configuration I’m about to share is perfect for a party of around 16 people as it keeps everyone in one group, yet allows plenty of room.

By using 4 trestle tables we pushed the short side of each table hard up against the long side of another table. Doing this with four tables, we created a large square configuration.

The tablecloths were ones we already had which were an elegant satin with vine patterns.

Plates & Cutlery

You need not purchase extravagant dining sets for your table to look expensive. Napkins are a functional way to tie in your theme color and add texture to any basic white plates.

For cutlery, set your fork to the left and knife and spoon to the right. Above the plate, place your teaspoon. I chose to use gold cutlery as it matched my gold and blue theme perfectly! However, silver cutlery looks just as good, especially when under candlelight.

Lastly, you will add your glasses above the fork setting.

Stationary

Banquet Centerpieces

To achieve a sophisticated atmosphere my primary Centerpieces were gold candelabras and candlesticks.

I love the ambience candles create and to me, they scream royal banquet!

Cheesecloth, as a table runner, is an inexpensive and elegant way to reintroduce your primary color and give texture to your table.

Fairy lights are a party organisers must have! They are so versatile, and as seen here can be casually combined with the cheesecloth to add a dainty source of light and magic

Lastly, place your candelabras and candle sticks. For my event, I used 29 white candle sticks.

Keep in mind that if you’re using real wax taper candles, they will likely melt onto your tablecloths. Trying to find a brand of candles that is slow melting is something to consider. Do not light them until just before your guests begin arriving.

*Pro Tip! You can remove melted wax from fabrics by placing the fabric in between two sheets of paper towels. Then go over the paper towels slowly with an iron. Repeat refreshing the paper towels until all the wax is gone.

Flowers

I love to add unique and whimsical flowers and greenery whenever possible.

This Banquet required a large piece, yet I didn’t want anything directly blocking communication between the tables and guests.

Therefore having a suspended arrangement is an impressive way to take your decorating to the next level.

If you want to know exactly how I created this massive garland another post is on its way with all the details and steps.

Youth Banquet Food

Thanks to the careful planning of the menu the dishes were delicious and only cost each attending guest $15NZD for a 4-course meal!

We were so blessed to have 2 ladies in the church volunteer as your chiefs. They did a fantastic job of cooking and plating the dishes.

As our waiters, we in-listed 3 willing tweens who spent the evening delivering meals, clearing and cleaning dishes, and making sure every glass was topped up.

If you are interested in knowing more about the meals, I will be posting a full menu breakdown for this event very soon.

Games

Who’s Fact?

This is a very easy game that requires practically no setup and can be run on and off throughout the evening as the MC feels fit.

It is a great way to help guests get to know each other better and is sure to produce some hilarious facts.

How to play:

1. At the beginning of the evening ask each of your guests to write 2 random facts about themselves. Each fact should be written on its own small strips of paper. The facts should not be too obscure nor too obvious.
2. Have your guests put their finished and folded facts into a bowl or hat.
3. The host will then pull and read aloud a fact.
4. All the guests must then point to the person they believe that fact belongs to.
5. The owner of the fact will then reveal their true identity to the group.
6. Repeat this process until all the facts have been used.

Sentence Sneaker

This game is so funny and is a great way to ensure conversations are happening around the table. Our teens laughed till they cried as people made up crazy stories to back up and disguise their prompts.

How to play:

1. Create a list of weird sentences. For example, “I have an irrational fear of running out of spoons”. These sentences should be totally bizarre, but maybe believable. I have a free printout of all my prompts free to download by clicking the link.
2. Print and cut out all your prompts. Place one under each plate.
3. Introduce your game and allow the guests to read their prompts without showing anyone else.
4. The guests must then use whatever sentence they were given within a conversation at some point in the evening.
5. Once someone has said their sentence the other guests may be suspicious and call them out by saying “sentence sneaker”. At this point, they have been found out and can no longer win. However, if roughly 5 minutes can pass without being discovered they have successfully snuck in their sentence.
6. The first 6 (or however many prizes you have) people to successfully use their sentence and not be caught out receive a prize.

This post was all about everything you need to know to host your own youth banquet your teens will never forget.