Monster's Ball: 11 Ideas for Halloween Parties

At last year’s “Galaween” event at the Chicago Cultural Center, Event Creative built a lavish, haunted-house-style entrance. This year, the agency’s designer Jeffrey Foster predicts that parties will take a glitzy turn with lace-covered pumpkins, silver or gold ­skeletons, marabou witches, or bejeweled or glittered skulls.

At the after-party for The Walking Dead’s Season 4 premiere in Los Angeles in October 2013, costumed zombies posed for photo ops with guests.

In September 2013, Target launched its Halloween wig collection by designer Chris March with a ghoulish bash at the Angel Orensanz Foundation for the Arts in New York. Hatch Creative Studio’s tabletop decor incorporated pieces from the retailer’s line of Halloween-theme products and home decor items. At the head of each table sat a spooky guest: a plastic skeleton.

In June, Chicago’s Revolt Events and Pure Kitchen Catering teamed up for a Halloween-theme photo shoot, where decorative accents included blood-red-and-black floral arrangements ­comprising scarlet ranunculus and red banana leaf; the ­flowers were arranged in a ­geometric vase.

Revolt Events and Pure Kitchen Catering also prepared bourbon-caramel apples with crushed peanuts on sticks.

Revolt Events and Pure Kitchen Catering presented seasonal eats, which included pumpkin-bisque shooters with cinnamon-vanilla cream and fried sage, with haunting dinner companions—skull napkins.

Spook guests by placing prop skulls or scary masks in unexpected places. At the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles in October 2013, Veuve Clicquot passed flutes of Yellow Label at its Yelloween party, which featured a liquor cabinet decked with startling tropes.

In October 2013, Chicago-based advertising agency Leo Burnett hosted an in-office Halloween bash. The party served office-friendly snacks, including a pumpkin-shaped cheese ball from Simply Elegant Catering.

Along the path to the in-office Leo Burnett bash, which had a bad-luck theme, designers from Art of Imagination placed black paper cat cutouts on the walls of the hallway.

Billed as a “skeletal spectacle,” Redmoon Theater’s 2012 Halloween party in Chicago featured dozens of the bony Halloween icons, and planners created unique ways to combine food and entertainment. At a s’mores station, two performers in lingerie and face makeup warmed chocolates over candles in a bathtub; blowtorches were used to melt the marshmallows.

At Keep a Child Alive’s “Dream Halloween” event at the Barker Hangar in Los Angeles last October, a display of oversize orange and green balloons mimicked the look of a giant pumpkin for a kid-friendly take on decor.