Ice Breakers

We love to play ice breaker games at our parties. They are a great way for guests to get to know each other, especially if they’ve not met before (as often happens at large affairs). An ice breaker is relatively straightforward. When guests arrive, they are given a pre-printed card to complete (usually just their name and the ice breaker topic). All cards go into a box…no peeking! When all guests have arrived, it’s time to start the game. Everyone is paired with someone they don’t know and the teams are challenged to see how many guests they can identify based solely upon the night’s topic. Go through the cards one at a time; giving everyone a chance to guess the identity. Then, go through a second time and reveal who said what (if there is an interesting story, pause to let the guest share it). Whichever team correctly guesses the most wins a prize!

CLICK HERE FOR STEP-BY-STEP DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING THE PARTY EVANGELIST’S SIGNATURE STRIPED ICE CUBES.

In the list below, there are links to the actual cards I created for various parties. Feel free to download and use them at your own events.

• Alter Egos—For our January 2015 Dessert Challenge, I came up with each guest’s “alter ego” by Google searching their first name plus the word “desserts”. The search results were hilarious; I usually picked the most outrageous one and had all the guests laughing as I described who they really “were” (basically, all the facts were true they just belonged to someone else’s business).
• Biggest change—What is the biggest change you’ve experienced in the past year? We played this game at our 2009 Sangria party; the winner received a bottle of wine.

• 6-word memoir—We’ve done this at a few sangria parties. It’s based on a book called Not Quite What I Was Planning and is a fascinating way to get to know other people. Each person needs to come up with 6 words (in sentence form or not) that sum up your life. The official website is www.sixwordmemoirs.com.

• What cause (or causes) are you most passionate about?—This game was a personal favorite and a great success. We played it at our 2008 Sangria party and had a three-way tie for first. The prize was a $100 donation to the charity of your choice; we gave three separate prizes that year!

• 3-adjectives—Write down three adjectives that best describe you. We’ve played this at several parties and even played a version of it the first night of our 2004 trip to Spain (we happened to be sharing a villa with 20+ other guests so it was a great way to get to know each other). The funniest entry we ever received was from our friend, Mathew, who wrote: “Tall, English, slightly bald”; we laughed for DAYS over that one!

• Hidden talent/secret desire—What is your hidden talent? What do you secretly desire to accomplish? We played this game at our 2007 Sangria party and it was very interesting to see what people revealed about themselves.

• What’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever done for love?—We played this game at our 2005 Valentine’s party. We had a lot of fun that night; the mangled French menu was a big hit. For a semi-translation of what the food items were, please click here.

• Chocolate-Covered Guest—What’s your favorite type of chocolate? Favorite candy bar? Favorite dessert? What was your best chocolate experience EVER? We played this game at a smaller party (2005’s Chocolate & Wine party) and came up with several questions to fully explore our chocolate-loving sides. We also played a fun chocolate trivia game (which our son, Dane, actually won).
• Murder-Mystery Game—This is a contribution from my lovely friend, April. We played the game at the Gilley’s 2010 Halloween party and I was declared the winner! If you want to know my winning version of the events in the tale, please email me. You may download my typeset version of the twenty-five clues here: Part One and Part Two.