Print Mysteries

How to Plan Your First Murder Mystery Dinner Party (Step-by-Step)

Planning a murder mystery dinner party for the first time is way more manageable than it looks on the surface. You need a good kit, a date, a guest list, some snacks, and basic decorations. That’s the whole thing. It looks confusing from the outside, but you’ll soon see that’s it a cakewalk. This guide walks you through each step, in order, so that all your questions are covered.

This article covers the planning stage specifically. For the full picture of how the night itself runs – check out our complete murder mystery dinner party guide.

And before you buy anything, first think about how many guests you want to invite. Guest count determines which kits you can use, which themes are available to you, which in turn determines the decorations and costumes. These 10 questions every first-time host should answer will help you with these decisions before you spend anything.

Your Planning Timeline

Four weeks out is the perfect time to start planning your dinner party. Here’s how to spread out the work so that you don’t stress yourself out.

Choosing the Right Kit

Everything in the planning process depends on the kit you choose. It sets the guest count, the theme, and the structure of the evening. You’ll want to make sure that you’ve chosen well.

Buy your kit based on the rough estimate of people that will be attending. Don’t go for free kits or spend too much on a kit. Dinner kits generally cost between $30 and $50.

Free kits will have very basic writing and obvious solutions that won’t be very fun. Guests will often figure out the killer immediately, and have nothing to do for the next few hours. Spend the extra few dollars on a well-written kit. It’s the foundation of your whole night.

For a detailed guide on what to look for, see how to choose a murder mystery kit – a buyer’s guide.

Guest Count

Guest count is important in determining which games you can purchase. You can’t even consider hosting a dinner party game until you’ve done some rought counts and seen how many people are interested.

The sweet spot for one of these games is 10 to 14 guests. The minimum number of people, is the minimum required to complete the game. If the minimum for a kit is 10 people, you’d want at least 12 people to confirm, so that if any primary characters cancel, you can swap characters around.

If you’re not sure how many people to invite, or you’re worried about a flexible guest list, read our guest count guide before doing anything else. It covers player ranges by kit type and what to do when guests cancel.

Sending Out Character Sheets

You have to send out character sheets far in advance for guests to see what role they’ll be playing and to find, borrow or purchase their costumes.

Handing out character sheets to late could also lead to guests hating their chosen character so much that they don’t attend. If there’s any issues, you want to know about it weeks in advance so that you can reorganize.

Send character briefs at minimum 3 weeks before. Two weeks at the very latest. In the email, include:

• The invitation explaining that it’s a murder mystery dinner party and what that entails
• Their character name and personality description
• Their relationship to the victim and other key characters
• Their secret (the information they should not reveal unless pressured)
• Costume ideas

Food and Drinks

Guests are going to be busy investigating and mingling the whole night. Most dinner parties are based around that and don’t come with menu options, as they expect you to have basic finger foods available.

Your options:

Format	Pros	Cons
Finger food / canapé buffet	Easier to mingle and investigate, guests serve themselves	Less formal, can be too casual for some themed nights
Starter + platable main	Structured, feels like a proper dinner	Will need to buy a dinner party game that fits this into its timeline
Pre-plated main only	Faster than full meal, can be worked into most kits	Needs more kitchen prep time during the game
Seated buffet / sharing platters	Social, easy to manage	Harder to mingle when having to shout theories across a table

For 20 specific food ideas that include dietary options, themed presentation ideas, and what will work best for different group sizes, check out our murder mystery party food guide.

For drinks: a themed cocktail or mocktail on arrival is always nice. After that, wine and soft drinks should be sufficient for most guests.

Decorations

Decorations is where most first-timers panic. I did so as well. But you’ll find that you only need a few cheap items to make your party look great. Murder mystery dinner parties have become so popular that there are tons of options available online that cost next to nothing.

I also use a lot of free printables for my decorations. For 1920s parties, I use some of my templates to create realistic-looking posters and newspapers to put around the room. I also make some custom wine labels for my events that can include guests names in them.

See 10 specific decoration ideas for my free printable templates and other budget-friendly suggestions. Check out our free murder mystery posters to see which designs will suit your party best.

The Day Before

It’s a good idea to do a final read-through of your host guide the day before. It’s one last check to see that you’ve completed everything on the checklist and that you’ve printed out all the pages you’ll need.

Keep everything organized in the order that you’ll need it so that you don’t provide the wrong evidence during a death. Some games like ours also have 3 deaths, and only evidence connected to individual victims should be displayed at specific times.

We design and love playing printable murder mystery kits. Every guide on this site is written from experience running actual games. Browse our murder mystery dinner party kits.