How to throw a GLOW Party

It was our daughter's 14th birthday so we wanted to do something special.  She hasn't had a birthday party in a couple of years so we thought we'd surprise her with a glow dance party.  I learned a lot in planning this party, in this post I'll show you how to throw a glow party- first of all there are glow items such as glow sticks that will glow on their own, then there are glow in the dark- which need to be exposed to light before they will glow, and lastly there are glow reactive which are things that will glow when under a black light.
It's important you know and understand the three differences when planning a glow party.

If you don't want lights on every now and again, or plan on having your party last longer than 20 minutes or so the glow in the dark stuff wont do you any good.

Glow sticks are great and can be used with black lights to make them stand out even more.  But they are fine by themselves and will glow on their own.  So if you don't want to invest in black lights you can stick with glow sticks and colored lights (we used Christmas lights) and you'll get a great atmospheric look!

Black lights can make unexpected things glow really well.  So if you want the glow theme to be a surprise you can be sneaky with the decorating looking normal, then when the normal lights go off and the black lights go on you have a glow party!  I got some black light bulbs at Walmart (it was close to Halloween) for $1.48 each.  You can also order them on Amazon.
The only down side to the black lights are the fact that if you want a great affect you'll have to use a lot of them.  There are also black light lamps that are probably more effective.

So for our daughter's party this is what we did-
We put up purple Christmas lights around the porch awning.
We filled up white balloons and put glow sticks inside- they glowed okay, but not as bright as I thought they would (or as bright as it shows on Pinterest)

On the tables I put milk jugs filled with water and behind them put some black light flashlights from amazon- these worked really well!! It amplified the black light really well.

We also filled some milk jugs with water and put glow sticks inside to put around the driveway where people would be dancing..... and once again the glow affect was disappointing.  They glowed, just not very brightly.  We even tried putting 3-4 glow sticks inside.

I ordered these really cool disco lights that plug into any regular light bulb socket.  They were about $8 each and TOTALLY worth every penny!  I highly recommend them, they added so much to the party and we can use them again in the future.


We did one table with glow items such as glow sticks, glow reactive paint, and flashing objects for people to make themselves glow.

We had a refreshment table that included: Popcorn, cheese balls, frosted cookies, and a cream cheese & ham dip with crackers.
To drink we had water and sprite with sherbet.
Finding food that would be glow reactive was HARD!!  I read that vitamin B will react to black light really well, so I had planned on putting a capsule full in the frosting of the cookies, but didn't realize until I needed it that I got tablets instead a capsules.

Our Music table had one of the disco light bulbs on it and we had some awesome dance music playing the whole time.

It was fun! I'd love to hear any tips & tricks you've found in doing glow parties.