Memorial Day is the unofficial start to summer, and after last year, it feels like we all deserve a big celebration. As more people get vaccinated, it’s safer to come together, especially for an outdoor cookout. If you’re ready to have the summer fun you couldn’t have in 2020, make your Memorial Day celebration in 2021 an event to remember with these tips.
Plan a Great Cookout
You can invite family and friends over and still keep everyone safe with an outdoor cookout. Memorial Day is a great time to fire up the grill — after you clean it, check the hoses, and make sure you have enough fuel for your fire, of course. If you want to make this a special one, consider these party elements:
Food: Keep it simple with crowd pleasers like burgers, hot dogs, and chips but invite everyone to bring their favorite cookout dish so you get a wide variety of foods to enjoy. Even better, you’ll have less you need to prepare.
Drinks: Use coolers and tubs filled with ice to keep canned and bottled drinks available and cold. Try an old-fashioned punch or freeze lemonade into ice cubes as an extra touch for lemonade, tea, and other beverages.
Alcohol: If you serve alcohol, make sure only adults of legal drinking age have access and consider limiting how much you make available to your guests. If you serve cocktails or fun fruity drinks, limit the liquor used and offer non-alcoholic versions.
Decorate: You can certainly go with an easy red, white, and blue theme for Memorial Day. Or you can come up with your own beachy, summery theme. Streamers, plastic plates, colored napkins — you can probably find everything you need at a dollar store, so you don’t break your budget while adding a festive touch to the entire event.
Be a Good Host
Social host laws govern how alcohol is handled at any gathering, including your home. If you serve alcohol at your Memorial Day cookout, you take on potential liability and responsibility for what happens if someone overindulges. One solution is to not offer adult beverages at all. But if you do, make sure you limit your liability as much as possible with these tips.
- Limit the amount of alcohol available. Two drinks per adult may be all you want to offer.
- Don’t be afraid to cut someone off if they’ve had too much.
- Take people’s keys and either call an Uber or let them sleep on your couch until they sober up.
- Carefully monitor underage guests to make sure they don’t sneak a drink.
- Stop serving alcohol at a certain point during your cookout and switch to water, coffee, soda, etc.
- Make sure to provide a wide variety of beverages so people have the choice of non-alcoholic options.
Before your Memorial Day party, check your liability insurance limits and talk to your independent insurance agent about what other considerations you need to make with your homeowners insurance before your backyard fills with family and friends celebrating the start of summer.
Contact Charlotte Insurance today so we can make sure you have enough liability coverage and help answer your questions.