Gilmore Girls Party Ideas (And Scavenger Hunt Printable!)

I started watching Gilmore Girls waaay back when it was originally on television. Back then, no one else I knew watched the show and I was all alone in my obsession. (Keep in mind, this was before Pinterest and Facebook, so I had no way of knowing that there were a gazillion other fans out there that went around saying ‘Oy With the Poodles Already.’ I was just that lone weirdo.)

I continued watching when the show hit reruns, and I bought the DVD’s as they came out. I even bought the behind the scenes book with my birthday $$ one year!

When my daughter Chloe was around fourteen, I decided to let her watch the show and we spent a summer watching the whole series. We kicked it off with a two day marathon that we spent eating pop tarts and mallomars and frozen pizza with tater tots baked on top, while we binged on the first two seasons. After that, we had to get back to real life and we stayed up late and watched episodes every night while my husband and younger girl were in bed. (Now that she’s married and grown up, I’m so glad for all those late nights we had!)

A year or so later, I let my younger daughter watch as well and the show became an obsession for all three of us. We annoyed everyone we knew with our constant quotes and obscure references. Okay, we still do that. More people know about the show now, but few are as obsessed as we are.

So a couple months ago, when it was time to plan my daughter’s bachelorette party, Gilmore Girls was the obvious theme to go with. You could use these ideas for any Gilmore Girls themed party, and we plan to reuse plenty of them for the party we will absolutely have when THE SHOW COMES BACK ON Netflix!!!! I say when, not if, because it has to happen. Period.

For this party, we couldn’t afford to buy a lot of the things that were on our idea list to buy. We had a wedding to pay for, and had just had a pretty nice wedding shower for Chloe. So our budget for the bachelorette party was low. For that reason, we ended up making most of the decorations. It worked and my daughter loved it!

Gilmore Girls Party Ideas

Our evening started with pizza at a local Gourmet Pizza Shop, and then we had a Gilmore Girls Themed Scavenger hunt (more on that in a minute), then all met back at our house to look at our pictures from the scavenger hunt and have a Gilmore Girls Dessert buffet and snacks!

We kept the theme a surprise and when Chloe got home from work on the day of her party, she saw this sign on the front door that her little sis/maid-of-honor made for her:

We had the soundtrack playing throughout the night. It is a must-buy for any fan. I had gotten it for Chloe for her 15th birthday, and it was perfect for the party.

I also put a picture of an ugly baby on her pillow, but I’m not going to share a picture of that here 🙂 Just Google, “Ugly baby” and you’ll get plenty of options!

Here is our 60-40’s Candy Bar:

If you don’t know what a 60-40 bar is, check out the episode: “There’s the Rub.” We bought some of Chloe’s favorite candies for the candy bar, and then when we got home, we thought of cute names for them based on the show. You can get candy tailored to the guest of honor’s likes, and name them yourself! So many options 🙂 Here’s ours:

We also had a signature drink, “The Chloe.” We put it in plastic martini glasses. Since the bride and her entire bridal party are under 21, we made it with 7up and pink lemonade!

I really wanted to order these black tshirts for everyone, (inspired of course by babette ate oatmeal and rory’s going to yale!) but it wouldn’t work with our budget. So I cut one out of construction paper and painted “chloe’s getting married!” on with white paint and we hung it as a decoration. It might be my favorite decoration! The Luke’s Diner sign is also made out of construction paper and I hung it off the edge of our wall with a straw. Cheap and easy!

No Gilmore Girls party would be complete without a trip to Asia. Here is our Asia table, complete with Dessert Sushi and a poster of Sandra Oh. I know it makes no sense. Unless you’re a Gilmore fan, then it makes perfect sense. Welcome to the last 15 years of my life.

We made the dessert sushi with rice krispy treats, fruit roll ups, and swedish fish. Ginchy!

Don’t think we forgot about Luke’s Diner! We set our kitchen table up with snacks like the Devil’s Starchy Fingers, the all-important Pop Tarts, and Deviled Eggs:

The mugs were something else I wanted to buy, but I made one instead. I bought a $5 white mug from Target and used sharpies to do the design, then baked it in the oven. It’s not professional-looking, but it works!

We put little touches all over the house. A nod to Yale, the Festival of Living Art, the Life and Death Brigade, The Dragonfly Inn, A Picnic Basket, (though no handsome bachelors were there to bid on it) and of course tons of yellow dasies (but not a thousand).

Gilmore Girls Bachelorette Party Ideas

In Stars Hollow fashion, we had Chloe dress up with lots of bling and lights. All the girls in attendance got necklaces, light up rings, and ring pops to wear.

Gilmore Girls Scavenger Hunt

Our scavenger hunt consisted of running around a shopping center and finding items to photograph and video. We had SO much fun with this! And the videos were hilarious. I created a secret Facebook group for everyone to upload their pics and videos to. We had two teams: Team Pink Ribbon and Team Blue Ribbon, inspired by the town’s famous reaction to one of Luke and Lorelai’s break-ups.

Afterwards, we all met back up at my house and I plugged my laptop into my TV and we looked through all the photos and videos and laughed and had a great time and tallied up our points. Members of the the winning team each got a gift card for a very popular local ice cream place. Here’s a picture of our team with “Vicious Trollop” lipstick on:

Here is the Scavenger Hunt List we used. Download it here:
Scavenger Hunt

What’s your favorite episode of Gilmore Girls?

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