How do you get the guests to leave?

When I held my party last year, although the party ended at a certain time, people stayed around for an extra two hours and wouldn’t leave!  How can I keep this from happening this year?

There are a few things you can do:

1. Make sure to have a definite ending time on your party invitation.
2. When people RSVP, you may want to reiterate the beginning and ending time of the party.
3. This situation can often happen when only adult friends and family are attending small kids’ parties and there aren’t too many kids at the party.  If this is the case, plan the party around your kids’ nap time so there will be  a natural time to ask people to leave.
4. If this is for older kids, when you are now inviting kids to the party, it will be easier to keep the ending time as the parents will need to move on to other things when the party end time rolls around.
5. If it is mainly adults, and no one looks to be leaving, you may need to say directly, “Well, this has been wonderful having you here to celebrate, but I need to clean up now and do x,y, and z.”  It may seem awkward, but being direct will help your guests to leave on time.

Good Luck!