A few weeks back we held a retro 90s party to celebrate Mr YVL’s 40th birthday. We chose the early 90s as our theme as this is a period of time we are very fond of as we were both in our early 20s. I was at university and he was travelling….the music was great, we were still in vintage clothing and we felt free! Ah those were the days!
Some of our readers really don’t like the 90s but we are open to all eras here at YVL: we think of it as retro and even featured it in our book! So to the party…we sent out CDs before and asked our guests to add their favourite tunes from the day to play. We love our 90s grunge so the only rule with the track selection was No Spice Girls!
The party was themed “Come as you were” a play on the Nirvana track “Come as you are” with the call out to everyone to wear 90s clothing. We decorated the house with smiley face balloons and sunflowers…my home back then was covered in sunflowers with book ends, mobiles, pictures and artificial flowers everywhere. We chose a Smarties oil cloth to cover our Ercol furniture which of course we didn’t want to get ruined.
We drank Hooch through straws and stuck lime into bottles of Sol.
We made brightly coloured vodka jelly shots (I remember drinking this in my tent in Greece on my 21st birthday back in 93!) Of course there were alcohol free ones for the kids and drivers!
90s sweets were on every spare surface and in our 60s glass bowls: Push Pops, jelly beans, M&Ms and giant dummies to wear around your neck. There was definitely a sugar rush happening that night.
We wore glow sticks- I still keep finding them around the house 3 weeks on! One of our best memories of the night was watching the kids bounce on the trampolene wearing the glow sticks in the dark..well we couldnt see them only the fleuro light!
This is me in 1993, wearing my grandma’s 1960s dress along with ear buns and my silver star earrings.
I wore the same dress and amazingly still had the earrings!
We love a quiz so we had to have one at the party. Everyone had to guess the artist and album name from a set of album covers stuck to our door. The girls took it very seriously. The boys less so…until it looked like they would be beaten then suddenly their competitive streaks kicked in.
As Greece played a big part in our lives back then (we both worked seasons out there) it felt right to eat Greek food in honour of Shirley Valentine. It was served up in orange 70s snack ware…as this was the time we discovered the 1970s this felt apt.
I bought Mr YVL a pop Swatch for his birthday. He said he wanted a watch but though he’d probably break one which is why he hasn’t had once since his Pop Swatch. He loved it..and is wearing it every day. It came in its original box too!
It was a great party and featured on another blog Trawlergirl. We danced the night away and ate Greek food for a week as we bought so much! And here is team YVL on the night…
And let’s finish with the song that inspired it all (and in fact brought me and Mr YVL together in the first place, but I’ll leave that for another blog!
