Murder Mystery Party: All the Details and the Coolest Wine EVER

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A few weeks ago we hosted a Murder Mystery party and it was so much fun!  I shared some sneaks on Instagram and yall had tons of questions so today I am sharing all the details.

MURDER MYSTERY PARTY

I had heard about these parties before and was “dying” to host one myself. Invite friends over for food, wine, fun and a murder mystery. . .yes please!  I want to start off by telling you about the wine we served at the party because it was so much fun.  It was called 19 Crimes wine.  Fitting right?!!  Have yall heard of this wine?

Not only is it delicious, but it has the coolest story!  It is based off an authentic historical events featuring real convicts.  Perfect for our murder mystery theme!  These convicts, guilty of at least one of the 19 crimes, were sentenced to live in Australia rather than be put to death.  This happened in 1788 and the prisoners who made it to shore pioneered a new country and new lives.  This wine celebrates their story.  Each bottle has a unique label with a different convict and they are interactive!  To make them interactive you download the free Living Wine Labels app to your phone and then select 19 Crimes (they have other brands on the app as well) and the fun begins.  You hold your phone over the wine label and the convict on the wine label will start telling their story!!  SO.STINKING.COOL!!  Each convict has a few stories to tell and each type of wine has a different convict.  This is seriously a crowd pleaser!  We also gave this wine as a prize to the winners who guessed the correct murderer! 19 Crimes wine can be found at Kroger, Ralph’s, and Fred Meyer.

 

Here is a video showing how it works

 

I mean. . .how cool is that?!  Ok. . .that helped set the mood for the fun party that we had.  Here are more details.

MURDER MYSTERY PARTY DETAILS:

PICKING THE PARTY: There are lots of different ways to do them, but I wanted something organized and prepared for me.  I headed over to the #1 Mystery Party company MyMysteryParty.com to find everything I needed.  They make it so simple.  They have a section that helps you find the perfect game for your party.  You start by picking your group, all female, all male, holiday party, etc.  Then you select adults only or kids too, then you can narrow down by the size of your group and it leaves you with a bunch of options to choose from.  We were having 14 (7 couples) so after narrowing it down we went with Sin City Slayer.  I thought it was a fun theme, the characters were hilarious and it would be easy to decorate. There are 2 options when picking the party.  You can do an Instant Download where you print everything yourself, or get a Party Ready Pack.  I decided to go with a Party Ready Pack.  It has everything you need for the party included, printed out and ready to go.  Saves you a lot of time and even though it is more expensive you save a ton in paper, ink and time so I though it was totally worth it

INVITATION:  I made this invitation in powerpoint and sent it to the guests

INSIDE THE PACK:  You get a booklet that walks the host through everything you need to know.  There are guest insturctions, 3 rounds of game play for each character printed out in a labeled envelope, optional pre-game round, forensic report, character guest list with costume suggestions, name tags, victim sign, mystery investigation sheet, and lots of bonus things like game options, food and decor suggestions, etc

HOW THE GAME WORKS:   There are different types of games, but in this particular game Geoff and I had no idea who the murder was or who the victim would be so we were in on all the fun.  Some games the hosts know, but I didn’t want to know.

Before the actual night of our party I emailed all the guests with their character info, costume suggestions and pregame info that was optional.  All this info came in the pack (above).  I created a Facebook event page for the party where I posted info like the video of our particular party the character guest list, etc.  I also encouraged guests to do the Pregame banter on the facebook page.  Basically it was stuff that helped with the game like my character BLUE CORAL was suppossed to tell another character LEE MINT that I saw xxxx person flirting with xxx person on the Vegas strip.  So I tagged my friend playing LEE MINT on our Facebook Event Page and said that.  It was really fun and got everyone involved leading up to the party.  All of the things to say were included in the Pregame round that was in my box and I emailed to the group.

So there are 3 rounds to the party and the pregame round (mentioned above) which is optional.

Then the night of the party, the guests arrived, put on name tags, I handed out Round 1 clues that were sealed in envelopes for each guest.

  • ROUND 1: The guests opened the envelopes with clues and then mingled letting these clues out while I served appetizers.  This round you start getting the scene for different characters relationships, previous scandals, rumors, etc. After some mingling, we headed into the dining room for dinner
  • ROUND 2: We served dinner and I handed out Round 2 clues.  Everyone read those and then the conversation over dinner was getting all of these clues out.  You stay in character all night which is hilarious because you see your friends saying things/being rude in ways they never would be.  It was great fun!  During this round the victim finds out they are the victim and their card has them excuse themselves and they go put on the victim costume.  There are lots of fun things for this you can find HERE.  Our victim had a shirt and a halo headband.  Then when they come back we all discuss more, read a forensics report which gave more info on the crime and then wrote down who we thought did it!
  • ROUND 3:  We passed out dessert and went around telling who we thought did it and why, then I passed out Round 3 cards.  These have to be read in a specific order and go around saying things until you are left with the murderer and then they read why they did it, how they did it, etc.  It was hilarious and our Murderer is the sweetest person ever.  It was such a good time!  We had 3 people guess it right (I was not one of them) and they all got prizes.

PRIZE:  Like I mentioned above we gave each winner (person who guessed the correct murderer) a bottle of 19 Crimes wine.  It was a huge hit.

FOOD: 

  • APPETIZERS: I served Spicy Sausage Dip.  I have shared this recipe before on Instagram stories, and Spinach Arti”choke” Dip 🙂
  • DINNER: Chicken stuffed with spinach and arti-“chokes”, “Slashed” Potatoes, broccoli and Caesar Salad
  • DESSERT: Cheesecake

DECOR:

Yall, I was having so much fun at this party I was a bad blogger and didn’t take many pictures!  I took lots of video which you can see below and it shows tons of the decor I did.  I will also share a few pictures I took below.  I got most of my items at Party City, Dollar Store,  MyMysteryParty and Hobby Lobby. I got decks of cards at the Dollar Store and made a card banner to hang above the buffet in our kitchen.  I also spread cards all over like confetti, hung them on our chandelier and cut holes in them to identify people’s wine glasses.  I used buffalo check, glitter and polka dot scrapbook paper from Hobby Lobby, make the crime scene body out of masking tape and got the money, coins, crime scene tape, victim shirt, etc from My Mystery Party.

Here Geoff (LEE MINT) and I (BLUE CORAL) are at the party.  I used blue hair coloring from Party City in my hair.
We seriously had so much fun with this party and hope it inspired you to throw your own.  It was definitely a night to remember.

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