How To Host a Murder Mystery Party – Carla Kiley

This year for my birthday I decided to get a few of my friends together and host a Murder Mystery party! Max and I love hosting little get-togethers at our house and thought this would be the perfect activity to celebrate my October birthday.

We decided to go with the Murder of A Millionaire from Night of Mystery. Max played the role of the host and was in charge of printing all the documents, putting together packets for each character, and printing the name tags.

I handled the food and made a yummy cheeseboard for an appetizer. For dinner, we did Chili on our Big Green Egg (Max handled this but this was the recipe he loosely followed!) We served the chili with a bunch of toppings and cornbread. Then for dessert, I made a candy bar with brownies, cookies, marshmallows, and a bunch of different packaged candies! For drinks, I made a version of this 1920’s Bees Knees cocktail for the ladies and the boys had craft beer.

Murder Mystery parties are fun because it gives your evening a theme! The way we did it was that Max matched everyone to their characters on Saturday morning (you can do this more in advance, we just got a late start!) and texted their character description to everyone. It was so fun because even though the guests didn’t have much notice, everyone came so well-dressed with stuff they had at home! Emily was the maid so she wore a skirt with an apron she had, Savana wore a black dress to play the accountant, Kathleen was the lawyer so she borrowed a blazer, and Alexis came in a sequin gown because she was the wealthy widow! I wore this dress, curled my hair, and added some costume jewelry to be the spoiled Millionaire’s daughter.

Once everyone arrived, Max gave everyone their first envelope which had money (for bribes!) and a personalized list of objectives. We put on some jazz music and everyone mingled while eating and drinking. Then, everyone ate dinner together in the dining room. After we were done dinner, Max gave the next instructions and we moved into the second part of the evening. We all got another envelope with new information and spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out the mystery.

The game finishes by everyone filling out a card with their guesses of who was responsible for the murder. For our game you also got to write in how much money you ended up with (after bribing or being bribed!) and nominations for Best Dressed and Best Performance.

If you’re thinking about hosting a Murder Mystery party, I would really recommend it! At the end, everyone was raving about how much fun they had and it really wasn’t too much effort on us as the host! You could even make it simpler by ordering take-out for dinner, too. I wasn’t sure if it would be enjoyable for everyone (especially the boys!) but I was happily surprised to see the whole group really get into it. I think I’ve decided to make this an annual tradition and host another one next year around my birthday.

Feel free to DM me on Instagram if you have any questions and tag me if you decide to have a party of your own!