Planning a party — big or small — is a lot of work. You have to consider your location, the atmosphere, food and beverage menu, budget, invitations, decorations, playlist, and more. Whether you’re planning a dinner party or a cocktail party, working by yourself or with someone else, let Evernote help you!

Don’t forget to download our Holiday Guide»

The logistics

Before you start figuring out your menu and vendors, consider your budget. Once you’ve set a budget, it’s time to start planning!

1. Scout locations. Unless you know you’ll be throwing a party in your home, use Evernote to find your perfect location. Snap photos with your mobile device, jot down notes and ideas, and compare locations back home on your computer. Remember that notes taken with your mobile phone are geo-tagged, making it easier to keep track of locations.
2. Research your vendor options. Clip information about catering companies, party supply stores and more using the Evernote Web Clipper for the browser of your choice. Be sure to capture information like phone numbers and addresses.[Learn more about web clipping with Evernote]
3. Make your guest list. Use Evernote to come up with your guest list, and keep track of emails and addresses by adding them to your ‘Guest List’ note in your ‘Party’ notebook.
4. Sketch out your table settings. Planning a dinner party? Use pen and paper to draw your table settings. Annotate your photos with Skitch, to add more detail. Snap a photo of your drawing with Evernote to make it searchable. [Learn how to use Evernote + Skitch, together]
5. Create your playlist. Whenever you come across a great band or song you’d like to add to your playlist, add it to your ‘Party Music’ note or notebook. It will make compiling your party playlist a breeze.
6. Figure out your party menu. Snap photos of cocktail menus at restaurants, clip recipes from the web, and scan in magazine articles to your menu inspiration notebook.
7. Join forces. Plan your party with a co-conspirator! Share your party-planning notebook to exchange ideas, share guest lists, menu plans, and more. [Learn more about sharing in Evernote]

Party time!

Once you’ve gotten everything planned, it’s time to enjoy the party. On the day of the party, use Evernote to:

1. Prepare your meal, appetizers, and cocktails. Use Evernote on your tablet or mobile device to access the recipes you’ve collected to pull together delicious bites and sips.
2. Organize your decorations. Refer to your sketches and outlines in Evernote to put up your party decorations, place settings and more.
3. Capture memories. Use Evernote and Evernote Food to capture the things you want to remember from your party: photos with friends, tasty treats, and more. [Get Evernote Food for iPhone]
4. Find information when you need it. Need to call a guest or the bakery that’s making dessert for your party? Access the information you need from your Evernote account, even if you’re not at your computer.
5. Remember the people you meet. Meeting someone new at your party? Use Evernote Hello to remember new people and reconnect with them later. [Get Evernote Hello for iPhone]
6. Pass on the good stuff. Share your drink recipes, vendor contact info, and more, with guests, straight from your Evernote account. Email individual notes, and post to Twitter and Facebook.

These are just a few of the ways you can use Evernote to help you plan your party (holiday-themed, or otherwise). How do you use Evernote to plan a party? Are you a party planner that uses Evernote to organize events? Share your ideas in the comments.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this series on using Evernote for planning your holidays. We hope you have a fantastic holiday season and a happy New Year!

The winter holidays are just around the corner. There are gifts to buy (often for picky people!), budgets to manage, parties to plan, and cards to send. We’re showing you how to survive the holidays, with a lot of help from Evernote.

Download our Holiday Guide*

*You can save it straight to your Evernote account, for easy reference. [Learn how to attach a file to your note]

How to use Evernote for holiday gift giving

If you’re like my mother-in-law, you implore everyone in the family to send you their gift ideas before the holidays. Lists come in different forms — from emails to handwritten notes — and they’re always a pain to manage. Use Evernote to get ahead with your holiday shopping:

• Forward gift lists from your email to your Evernote account by emailing them to your Evernote email address (found in your Preferences).
• Use Evernote to snap a photo or scan in paper lists. Add titles and tags to make searching easier. You can also search inside of images and PDFs so if you’re at the store and see something you recall seeing on a gift list, just type in the item name into your search box.
• Create a checklist associated with gifts you plan to purchase. When you’re at the store and want to cross something off your list, just pull it up in Evernote on your mobile device. [Learn how to create a checklist in Evernote]
• Doing some comparison shopping? Use Evernote to keep track of great deals by clipping products from the web using the Evernote Web Clipper and snap photos of items (and price tags) in store. Search through your research from any computer or device to finalize your decisions.

Evernote for finding the perfect gift, any time of year

Figuring out what to get for people that seem to never have a list can be kind of stressful. Take advantage of the moments when friends and family hint at things they’d like to receive.

• When you’re at lunch with your mom and she mentions that she really wishes she had a nice wool sweater, jot down a discreet note in Evernote on your smartphone.
• Out shopping with a friend and notice her eying a certain dress? Snap a photo of it using the snapshot feature in Evernote on your phone.
• Whenever you’re browsing the web and come across something that you think your dad, brother, or uncle may appreciate it, clip it using the Evernote Web clipper. Tag it with a memorable tag like ‘gift ideas: dad’ or jot down a few notes to go along with the clip. Search through your clips anytime, anywhere. [Learn how to use the Evernote Web Clipper]

No one says you can’t do a little shopping for yourself. Take note of gift ideas for yourself and link all of them (using Note Links) into a single note titled ‘Holiday Wish List.’ [Learn how to use Note Links]

ShopAdvisor recently launched a gift list feature that helps you find products, shows reviews and alerts you when the price of something you’ve been eyeing meets your budget. The app’s new Evernote integration allows you to create your gift list in Evernote and lets ShopAdvisor ‘watch’ this list for you. You can also save watched items to Evernote using ShopAdvisor on your iPhone or Android — a great way to comparison shop. A personal shopping assistant sure can take the stress off holiday gift-buying! To start using ShopAdvisor with Evernote, you’ll want to link your account by first going here.

Don’t Forget: Evernote for the holidays Twitter Party

Come chat with Carley, our new Parenting Ambassador, about ways to stay sane during the holidays and focus on family. Learn more here. For more holiday talk, head to our Evernote for the Holidays forum discussion.

Read how other Evernote users use Evernote for planning the holidays, and share your ideas!

Next up: we’ll be talking about ways to manage your budget during the holiday season, followed by planning the perfect holiday party.