Willy Wonka: Pure Imagination goes a long way

I wanted to start with some past party's I designed and executed (quite nicely I might add). Being the devoted soul that I am to chocolate, I've always thought it would be awesome to have a Willy Wonka Themed birthday party, after all who wouldn't want an entire party centered around candy and chocolate? So after little convincing I set out to throw a 30th birthday party for my boyfriend, and the entire event would be centered around dear Mr. Wonka. To begin I must include the fact that my boyfriend is widely popular and when word got out that his 30th was going to be Wonka themed everyone wanted to come. We sent out over 60 invitations and I believe that is where we should begin. I found and down loaded the Wonka font and created an invitation that looked similar to the Golden Ticket featured in the movie. I purchased golden card stock from paperandmore.com and printed off some amazing invites. I have to tell you once I started planning this little shindig I could not stop singing Pure Imagination! It was all I could do not to annoy people. I knew I wanted bright vibrant colors and lots of candy so I started purchasing candy a few months in advance. I was lucky enough to be throwing the party after Easter so I was able to get a lot of great deals on candy. I did have to do some extensive research to find the cheapest candy I could since I knew most of my focal point was on the candy buffet. I wanted to be sure every guest received a Wonka bar, and finding those were difficult, but Candywarehouse.com became my new best friend. I knew deep down when I was looking for candy that I wanted only Wonka candy so I achieved that (except for the gum, I knew we had to have gum since Violet chews it non stop) but dear Mr. Wonka doesn't make gum so I had to cave on that. I spent months executed this party and now finally the photos!

Mr. Wonka! I knew I wanted him to dress up like Wonka and this was not too difficult to pull off, he is tall and skinny like Gene Wilder, all I had to do was find a purple jacket (good will) a big green bow (party supple store) and a top hat (ebay.com) he also carried a cane (not pictured but party supply store)

Here we are I am Veruca Salt and Mr. Wonka. We had every person sign the contract before entering the "factory"

The contract is the same as the one seen in the movie that the children must sign.

Here is the far wall when you walk into the room

One of the candy tables

Notice the sanitizer... I'm a stickler for clean hands

I posted sayings throughout the room from the movie

In the scene with the Golden Eggs there are boxes in the background that have this on them. I decided I wanted to fill some of the space with these so I purchased there from Office Max and made a template and hand colored each one of these. It worked out nicely as you can imagine how much we had to carry in.

For food selection we had these GIANT pretzel sandwiches (2 of them) to feed the guests we also had chips and pretzels

The cake table

Being a Pastry Chef has its perks, I saw something similar to this and knew I had to do it!

I also got sparking candles so it was quite amusing!

Now we enter the chocolate "waterfall" area

One of the candy trees I made (Ikea pot, Spanish moss and sticks sprayed gold.) I used fishing line to hang candy from the tree.

Each table had something different on it, this one was the golden egg table (yellow foam egg from Michael's, spray painted gold)

The drink room, the office had a small kitchenette off of it and this is where we did drinks

A wonderful artist named Nick Fruhling made these graphics and I happened to stumble across them in my search for ideas for the party and I knew it would be awesome to have in the drink area. I emailed him and he so kindly sent me the original high resolution images and I printed this in poster size from posterbrain.com for $10!!! We now have it framed in the house for memories. Special thanks to Nick and a link to his site he has lots of great art work!! | www.nickfruhling.com

I was able to rent (for free) the local township Office/board room, it is free for members who live in the township. It also included this screen where we had a "movie theater" with the movie playing during the party.
As you can see there was a lot of thought put into this party and I am so glad it was successful for everyone involved. I can't thank enough Jesse (Mr. Wonka) for letting me crash his 30th birthday with one of my wildest dreams of a candy birthday! Also to my family (Katie for coming and helping set up) and everyone who helped clean up this room! Also a very special thank you to my friend Leslie who happens to work for Nestle (who owns Wonka) and was able to give us some mush needed support in the candy department. I will forever hold a warm place in my heart for Mr. Willy Wonka.