So as you can see in the picture, I threw a party last year. AEW is a pro wrestling company, much like WWE. They had this big outdoor show at Wembley Stadium in London. Sold something like 80,000 tickets. We watched live on PPV.
It’s the first time I ever threw a wrestling watch party. I invited 4 people. I bought cheese, soft pretzels, bought chips/queso. I had vodka, whiskey, beer, and 3 different THC vape pens along with edible gummies. I also had coke (the soda), barqs root beer, and one of the special novelty mountain dew flavors.
I cooked chicken, and cut the cheese into cubes with individual toothpicks. I got out my good plates. And used the projector to make the screen 90 inches.
Only 2 people showed up. Nobody ate hardly anything. Nobody drank anything. Hardly anything was said. This picture was taken AFTER the party. We went through 1 bag of chips, and 1 1/2 jars of queso.
I literally could have just bought 1 bag of chips, 2 jars of queso, and saved $100 and 2 days of prep work.
I even had 2 different styles of BBQ sauce for the chicken.
Yes, it’s a year later, and I’m still mildly infuriated over it!
Shit that looks delicious but maybe they just weren’t hungry (could have eaten before). And I don’t mean to disrespect you but you did not have to do this much for watching a wrestling game. Though it does suck 2 people flaked.
Also, having been on the other side of such a situation: it’s not cool to pressure or guilt trip your guests. Either be hospitable and let them do whatever they want, or don’t invite them.
If people aren’t hungry, then they aren’t hungry. Maybe they are on a diet, maybe they misunderstood OP’s intention and ate beforehand. Maybe they are recovering from something and don’t want to eat too much.
And as for the two that did not showed up. It’s a good practice to reconfirm the night before. Sometimes people forget. Sometimes life gets in the way.
If they did reconfirm and still didn’t show up and did not have a good excuse, then I would start looking for better friends.
Hope OP has better success next time. I do understand that the situation sucks.
But it’s also a situation that, in my opinion, is preventable.
It’s why for board gaming, nowadays we plan on this weird mix of snacks: Most is just bagged stuff so we can always not open bags, and the little fresh stuff that there is - usually one guy who loves to bake - is not done just for that evening, he makes a whole lot, brings some to board gaming and the rest goes to colleagues in the office.
And if we know before hand that nobody has eaten but we all want a major meal, we’ll order something and in turn plan for even less snacks.
For DnD night I’ll usually make stuff that’s good for leftovers.
Speaking of… I need to go get stuff for chili.
So I have a friend that sounds a bit like OP.
He plans some event and invites a few people (including myself). I said I already had plans, but would try and make it if my other plans ended early.
Weekend comes around and he prepares a preposterous amount of food for everyone. Like enough to feed a family for an entire month.
My other plans don’t end up ending early, so I wasn’t able to make it. He then sends me pics of all the food that hadn’t been eaten and does this little guilt trippy dance he always does: “my friends and I were really excited to have you join us, guess I gotta throw all this away now”
Like bro…I never said I could go in the first place! And even if I was there, there is no WAY I’d be eating all that food lmao.
I really don’t understand this behavior. It’s like they get a pleasure out of playing the victim constantly.
Not saying this is you, OP. Just wanted to vent a little bit haha
I will add that while I don’t know OP’s friends that seems like a ridiculous amount of food for just 5 people, unless you know they’re skipping their main meal that day before. And you need to confirm that, something I learned with organizing board gaming. You can’t just assume people will be hungry/thirsty.
It sounds silly, because we have this assumption that we should “just have enough stuff” (and being hungry right now, the stuff in the OP pic looks yummy!), but we’re also not throwing a kid’s birthday party, we can just ask and collectively organize and plan.
Yeah we also have friends in our group that have special diet restrictions/health issues they don’t want the while world knowing about where they can’t eat certain foods.
It’s one thing to ask someone to make certain food, then showing up and not eating any. But it’s likely OP’s guests never asked for all of this. So I don’t really see how OP can be upset that his guests didn’t stuff their faces?
Sometimes people aren’t hungry. Or they’re on diets. Or have legitimate medical reasons for not eating certain foods. It really doesn’t matter. I never understood this logic of getting personally offended because people didn’t eat something I made. I don’t give a shit, more for me! Or I can donate it/save it for later!