Martha Stewart might not be impressed with my hosting skills, but I promise she would have a good time. You know how Thanksgiving hosts have systems, spreadsheets, and schedules? Well, now I get it. Three springs ago, when we were about to have our first 20-30 family gathering (a school event), Brian and I were both scrambling and sweating for 18 hours straight. It was fun, but we didn’t have any of it. And while that’s an extreme amount of people, the systems that we have since come up have made it so easy, and they work for gatherings of all sizes (with modifications, of course). It’s still work, but not stress. We are both able to have fun, and the cleanup the next day is actually very doable. This is important for summer entertaining! I’m a Virgo, enneogram 7 – organized, systemic fun is my favorite, and I look forward to all our gatherings now.

For context, we throw 15-18 outdoor gatherings a year (spring, summer, fall). We have 3-4 very large fundraisers (people buy tickets, school gets the money, we throw the party), many 6+ family gatherings of our closest friends (30-40 ppl), and then, of course, the smaller ones with just my extended family (20 people) or smaller groups of friends/kids. ALL of them are casual, we don’t hire help for any of them, and err on the side of “easy” over “perfect”.

I like everything I buy to look nice, sure, but I mostly want people to have a good time, and I find that most people in Portland like things to feel casual, relaxed, and warm. People come for the company and the fun, but that doesn’t mean it can’t look nice and go smoothly.

My General Large Outdoor Party Tips:

1. Burgers are best for smaller groups (under 30), not big ones. Trust me. If you want them to taste good, it’s a lot more work prepping, slicing, shredding, cooking, and cleaning. Someone has to really be on grill duty, and you can only do so many at a time. It’s a never-ending job, and a cold burger doesn’t taste that good. Of course, it’s doable, but we don’t anymore. Same with a taco bar, BTW. Sounds easy, but so much more prep and cleanup for large groups.
2. For our larger fundraisers with 60-100 people, where they bought “tickets,” we either order drop-off catering (Qdoba – an awesome taco/burrito bowl bar) or order pizzas. We don’t attempt to feed that many families on our own. The theme of these events is usually “Pig’s birthday party” or a “Family play date,” so it’s more about the yard, animals, pickleball, and gathering as a neighborhood, rather than a course-out meal. We have crafting tables and yard games. For our adults-only pickleball party, we do a huge make-yourself sandwich bar, mostly from Costco, and leave it out on the kitchen counter.
3. For 6-8 families, we do potlucks every time. We provide the main dish and salad (see below), and a dish or two, then we assign the rest. And yes, people like to be assigned (know your friends and assign accordingly, some people excel at cheese plates, others at buying pre-made potato salad). Everybody brings drinks. After a few potlucks where the food was redundant and we didn’t have enough of one dish, I asked my friends sheepishly if I could assign specific dishes, and everyone was so relieved and thanked me for taking away their “guessing stress”. A quick, “Are you cool if I just assign dishes to make it easier?” usually is all you need to say.
4. Avoid single portions snacks bags, juice boxes, and canned sodas, or you will be cleaning wrappers and 1/2 drunk cans all over your yard for days. We buy bulk goldfish, chips, pretzels, etc., and dump them in huge wooden bowls. We also pre-mix lemonade in huge plastic pitchers for kids and don’t provide canned sodas (unless it’s a smaller group). Kids never finish a soda from a can. Don’t do it for a group this size.

So that’s some blanket party tips we learned from mistakes we’ve made, but let’s get into how we do it so it’s actually smooth.

What Do We Actually Cook For Big BBQs?

Our Go-To Menu For 30-50 People:

1. Pre-marinated Skewers (store-bought) or, if we have the time, we love overnight marinated flank steak, chicken breast, and sausages (sliced and plattered so people can have a bit of each). Hot dogs for the kids are frequent (but recently I’m avoiding due to nitrates, sorry). While I love grilled veggies, for 30-50 people, it’s too much to prep, and the timing gets tricky on the grill with the meat, so we keep it simple.
2. Boiled corn (not on the grill, as to compete with meat grilling time) and usually in a massive pot, so you can do it earlier. Cut into 1/2 or even 1/3rds. No corn holders, people can use their fingers.
3. Canned baked beans dumped into a pot – Brian’s favorite. (The corn and beans are why we put two burners in our outdoor kitchen – we cook them both there, but can do so on the grill, or you could buy a two-burner electric cooktop if you are going to cook these frequently outdoors).
4. HUGE green salad – I prep earlier in the day, shove it in the fridge, and wait to toss til right before eating.

Rectangle Platter (similar) | Serving Bowl (similar) | Gold Tongs | Green Scalloped Bowls | Fly Fans | Flatware | Wood Caddy (similar)

Friends usually bring chips, store-bought potato salad, dips, desserts, charcuterie, baked mac and cheese, or another veggie side. They all bring fun stuff to drink.

Tips And Products So It Looks Good And Goes Smoothly

Choose a neutral color palette that lets food pop and keeps everything looking a bit more curated (less messy looking). I bought mostly white melamine platters, wood bowls, with some green mixed in, which works easily in our yard, and the food looks pretty on white. Stay away from themed dishware. If you are throwing a 4th of July party, get red/blue paper napkins or plates, but keep all your serving materials neutral so they can work for all occasions.

Opt for Lightweight, stackable everything – platters, serving bowls, dipping bowls, and even cups (although just realized some of our cups aren’t!). This is for easy transport back in to do the dishes and easy storage since it’s seasonal. **Y’all, I bought most of these platters a couple of years ago before I learned about micro-plastics, but it seems that, unless under high heat, melamine doesn’t leach micros like other plastic platters. Other great options are wood or enamel (like camping dishes), or using ceramic outside (which is just a lot more labor for large groups).

If I were buying now (or when I need to buy more), I’d get these simple metal platters, four for $38. Stacking, unbreakable, cute, and easier to clean than wood, but no micro-plastics. Speaking of…

No glass or ceramics outside. I’m done cleaning up broken glass outside near children – so many have broken (platters get dropped, wine glasses fall on stone, and carrying them all into the kitchen is so labor intensive). Beer drinkers still like classic red keg cups (we have a keg), but I put out our cute reusable cups for cocktails and wine (see below), and kids usually get cheap Dixie cup-style since they will leave their cups all over the yard, and no one knows whose is whose.

Wine Glass | Water Glass | Fly Fans | Flatware | Wood Caddy (similar)

Avoid doing dishes for huge groups (duh). I have a lot of landfill guilt, so we use compostable paper plates most of the time (Oregon has a great compost program), which are admittedly expensive. For under 20 people, I’m fine eating on melamine dinner plates and doing the dishes, but adding that on top of all the platters and serving-ware stops making sense for larger groups (we did it and regretted it). We avoid plastic silverware because I hate eating with it, don’t want it in a landfill, and it has microplastics, so I bought that super affordable wood and metal picnic-style flatware in bulk that I LOVE (and yes, we wash in the dishwasher and it lives in the caddy).

NEW HACK!!! If you are mostly doing burgers, dogs, sandwiches, or finger foods, then using fast food lunch baskets with a liner is SUCH A good hack. We are going to use these for our kids this summer (we host a lot of kids over here in a few summer camps run by a local teen). So only the liner needs to get thrown away, but no dishes need to be washed, less waste, and less expensive than compostable. I’m buying these because they have enough of a flat bottom surface that could handle chicken/salad meals as well, and then we can reduce our waste even more. This might be my new summer BBQ protocol, so stay tuned!

Wood Stacking Bowls (similar) | Green Scalloped Bowls | Tablecloth (similar)

Hot Tip: Wet food (potato salad, green salad, grilled veggies) goes in or on melamine or metal bowls and platters, but dry food (snacks) can go in wood. It’s just easier to clean (and I like the visual mix).

Drinks! Get That Hydration Station!

This is by far the biggest pain point that I had to solve – everyone always running out of drinks, cups everywhere, kids begging for water, etc.

Drink Cart | Stanley Drink Dispenser | Wine Glass | Water Glass | Pitcher | Green Tub

So we use this bar cart and leave it here, with usually 2 huge cold liquid dispensers – one for water, and one for lemonade. Then, in the plastic pitchers, we can either mix up another kid drink or do pre-mixed margaritas or cocktails. It took me so long to find a drink dispenser that held more than a gallon that wasn’t bright yellow or orange, so I was SO excited when I found these 5-gallon Stanleys on Amazon. I bought two and put them on black plant risers (the only thing that I need to figure out is how to label them, I used stickers and they became gross – so I’m going to buy some hanging cute chalkboard tags and maybe use a command strip hook?). Underneath, we keep N/A seltzer drinks for adults who don’t want to imbibe.

It took me a while to find the pitcher that wasn’t hideous, tiny, had a lid, but was unbreakable. These are pretty great (but heavy for smaller kids under the age of 8, FYI). The drink dispensers really are where it’s at. We do Crystal Light when I can find it in bulk, but mostly Country Time lemonade (and water). The green rubber tub is from IKEA. The acrylic glasses are my favorite, and I have them in three sizes -large water glasses, smaller cocktails, or a stemmed version. They look like glass and are easy to wash in the dishwasher, but won’t break outside.

My only regret with my RTA outdoor kitchen design is not putting the wine cooler closer to this side of the counter, near the Keg. When people sit on the stools, it makes it hard to reach the wine from the outside. So we usually use this for ice and backup wine, but then keep a bucket or cooler of wine on the floor near the hydration station.

My Favorite “Tools” To Level Up

Cordless Table Lamp | Cordless Floor Lantern | Blue Check Tablecloth (similar) | Medium Blue Tablecloth (similar)

Now, the day we shot, my new blue plaid tablecloth was still in the wash, so I threw these two smaller ones on and really liked how they looked, but I usually love mixing patterns on all our tables. I bought this one from Target, but I also love this one from Wayfair.

Game Changers: Fly Fans + Rechargeable Lamps + Tongs

Cutting Board | String Lights | Fly Fans

In years past, we had these big netted domes to keep bees and flies off food, but they are annoying as people have to take them off to get to the food, and no one knows where to put them, etc. We still have some just in case, but right now we are loving these fly fans. I bought these that look like faux wood, and they are on the more expensive side, but I like how they look, obviously. These are battery-operated (I wish they were rechargeable), but so far they’ve lasted through four gatherings (so around 10-12 hours) and are still going strong, so maybe battery is actually better.

They obviously don’t hurt when you accidentally lean into them or when a kid touches them.

Fly Fan

Rectangle Platter (similar) | Serving Bowl (similar) | Gold Tongs | Green Scalloped Bowls | Fly Fans | Flatware | Wood Caddy (similar)

This year, I also bought two different types of gold tongs, which make serving yourself while holding your plate so much easier. I bought normal tongs for meat, and then the two-handled serving tongs for salads.

No more two-handed salad servers to deal with, and I love how everything matches (and was so cheap).

No more candles, rechargeable lamps FTW. I have a pretty solid collection of rechargeable outdoor lamps now that I LOVE. It takes work to collect them all and keep them charged, but if you entertain outside a lot, it’s worth the investment because the ambience is so much better and it’s far less messy (or dangerous) than candles. We put them on all tables, and have some that are solar (like these) that turn on automatically when the sun goes down.

Cordless LampWood Stacking Bowls (similar) | Green Scalloped Bowls | Flatware | Tablecloth (similar)

Lastly, don’t sleep on shatterproof string lights – they are such night-time game changers for ambience. My rule is match the string cord to your house color if it’s going inside a covered area (like our string lights on our back patio and outdoor kitchen – both white), but if it’s out in a yard, then a black cord goes away so much more and mixes in with the dark green of any trees or the dark sky. And I like a casual drape, don’t worry about making them perfectly tot. We have them lined along our split rail fence around the pool area, and I want to add them along the animal fence line this summer.

Games And Fire

Listen, we have a lot to do here, so admittedly, we don’t feel the need to keep adding to our game repertoire. Cornhole is the overwhelming winner every single time, but I recently bought Skittle Scatter because the kids love it on camping trips. And we believe in solo stoves a lot 🙂

Quick Answers To Questions I Get All The Time

Where does everyone go to the bathroom? Everyone uses the powder bath near the mudroom, and it’s been totally fine (I’ll still use my bathroom). I would imagine a lot of dudes go outside. There has never been a line or any sort of backup, but I am excited to offer a more outdoor-oriented bathroom in the guest cottage.

How do you deal with the mess afterward? The cleanup is usually very doable because the entire mess is outside. We have to wash all the platters, acrylic glasses, etc., but that’s usually inside, and the kids clean up the yard. It’s still 2-3 hours of work, but inside parties are SO much more work, and the clean-up is way more intense.

Do you have the pool uncovered and available for every gathering? We only allow use of the pool when our close friends are over, and the parents know to watch the kids (and most of the kids are closer to tweens now, thank god). But no, we leave it closed for all school events when toddlers might be here. And we have trampoline rules as well. Most of the time, we make the kids do anything else, and they end up playing Ghost in the Graveyard for HOURS. There is enough to do, so everyone is fine 🙂

So that’s how we do it, and I hope it was helpful! Summer entertaining shouldn’t just be fun for the guests; you should enjoy yourself, too. Let me know what tips or hacks you all use! xx

*Photos by Kailtin Green