How to host a swinger party- getting the crowd is a basic requirement.

Once you’ve been to even a few parties, the same thought tends to surface in everyone’s mind- it looks like you are paying a lot of money for something that would be quite easy to organise yourself.

This is factually wrong.

Hosting your own quality party (whether swinging, kink-based or some mix of the two), is, in fact, a huge undertaking. There is a steep learning curve, a lot of unforeseen obstacles and some major pitfalls to dance around. There is, however, a certain pride, organisational joy and sense of prowess to doing one well. With that in mind, I’m composing a multi-part guide to hosting your own party. Today’s instalment is the first, and most vital, part of your journey to becoming your own event organiser: How to get the crowd of guests!

Want to host a party- the preparation

Long before you choose a date, style of party, venue, or start planning activities, decor and arrangements, you are going to need to make yourself a large pool of potential guests. Having a few contacts who swing simply won’t work. Here are some of the mistakes people make when choosing people:

1. Assuming that all the people you know and invite will attend. You want to know how to host a swinger party? Expecting everyone to attend will be a fail. They won’t. Some people live further away than others, have other events and responsibilities, busy lives, or simply flake out at the last minute. It’s how it goes. This applies even if they are your good friend, you believe them to be reliable and they firmly, definitely say they are coming. Expect an attrition rate of at least 15%. With those you know less well, expect an attrition rate over 50%. The least reliable attendees are attractive single women who don’t know you or the other guests well, followed by single men. Let’s face it, if they suddenly get a message from someone they’ve been hoping would call, a better offer, or simply overbook their weekend (as Londoners especially are known for) they will bail in a heartbeat.
2. Assuming a date that works for you will be everyone’s priority. Trying to get a good date that works for even a reasonable swathe of your friends is really tricky. There is no way that everyone you’d like to see will be available. You’ll probably have to speak to those you value most and try to work something in around them. Even so, things change. You’ll probably find that trying to match up schedules will give you a date at least a few months into the future.
3. Believing that it will be easy to replace drop-outs last minute. It really won’t. If you go on the apps and make an event listing, hoping to pick up some replacements, you are going to end up with a really random collection at your party- mostly fairly unattractive single men with questionable social skills and an unreliable understanding of consent. If you haven’t had time to meet them in person and vet them (ideally in another party environment, so you can check whether their charm and graces continue once they see naked people or fall away into neanderthal behaviour) then you are making a whole heap of trouble for yourself and your guests. The quality of any events you host will be remembered and widely known- ensure that you prioritise quality.
4. The oversimplification of gender ratios. Half men and half women, right? What else matters? Nope. Bad plan. Firstly, apart from completely excluding other gender identities, it overlooks sexual preferences and play styles. Your party with 1 horny, straight single guy, 1 vanilla lesbian, 1 kinky asexual woman and 1 gay man isn’t going to work for obvious reasons. You need to look beyond their genitals at their play styles, and consider whether there is even a technical possibility of their play preferences being compatible, as well as the much trickier art of getting people together who will actually be attractive to each other as individuals. Ironically, with even a slight predominance of women on a chat group (and we will come to that later) men will complain it’s a ‘sausage fest’ and likely not attend. This tends to leave a lot of women in attendance and few men when it comes to the actual event. Sounds great, right? Not really. Your average swinger woman is quite capable of going all night and wearing out several men all by herself, but is generally far more selective about who she will have sex with than the men. For this reason, in terms of attendance, you want to ideally have slightly more men than women, but they need to meet their preferences for appearance, play style and personality. A tricky endeavour indeed.
5. Try to stuff it with hot, young, single, bisexual women. What could go wrong, right? They’ll play with anyone! They’ll do couples! They’ll have sex with any of the men, and maybe each other, and make a nice show for everyone! And women don’t make trouble, do they? Far easier to manage than a bunch of horny men? Oh, my dear baby ducklings, no. There is no part of this that is correct. Firstly, you’ll have a lot of trouble finding anyone who matches this description. If you do, they’ll probably not show up. They are called unicorns for a reason. If they show up, they will be expecting to pick only the very finest specimens to play with, who meet all their own criteria best. They are not your bowl of peanuts for your other guests. They know they are special, they know their value to you and everyone else, and they aren’t stupid. Your best hope of getting women like this to attend is to target their whole friendship group (the collective noun is ‘a blessing’ of unicorns) and make them your co-hosts. They will then pick out and invite the people to invite who match what they are looking for. Sorry, but your friends are unlikely to get a look-in. Secondly, many bisexual women don’t want to play with couples, even if they like threesomes. The dynamics are a bit sticky, there are a lot of issues that put bisexual women off from taking this role (I’ve written an entire book about why) and they will be super-selective in how they play, and with whom, even if they do. Thirdly, just because someone is a woman, it doesn’t mean she’s passive, pliable or easy to handle. Of all the drama and tricky situations at swinging events I’ve seen over the years, women have been responsible for more than half. There is no guarantee they won’t violate consent by joining without asking. There is no guarantee they won’t get drunk and emotional, start a fight or stir up trouble for someone. If you are hosting, ultimately it is your responsibility for possibly having to physically throw a single woman out of your event in the middle of the night, and deal with all the repercussions that come from that. Be prepared, vet thoroughly, do your background research on your female guests just as much as your male guests, and have a plan in place if anything starts to get out of hand.
6. Sticking a bunch of people together will be fine. People tend not to want to attend parties where they won’t know anyone, but conversely they may also avoid events where they have bad history with the other guests (which may be romantic, sexual, or based on previous encounters or behaviour). You need to have enough on a grasp of the complex and ever-changing social ecology of the scene to put people together who are going to feel comfortable, play well and not set them up for situations that will cause drama. Having this sort of information available to you is not something you’ll be able to do when new to the scene. It’s not until you find yourself constantly realising what a small world it is, running into dozens of people you already know at every event, and having yourself deeply immersed in the social swinger lifestyle that this will all start to come clear for you. You can’t do it as a once a year swinger, a tourist or a casual newbie. In the early days, you just don’t yet know how much you don’t know.
7. Not vetting people properly. You need to meet people in person. Online, by text, with photos just simply won’t do it. The world is full of flakes and fakes. That charming person by text might reek of BO in person, be unable to hold a conversation, have real personal-space issues or have fundamentally lied through their teeth about many things (height, weight, age, photoshop, language skills, all sorts). Though you can’t guarantee all your guests sex with the person of their choice, you’ll need to have a rough idea of their individual preferences and select people who are going to be attracted to each other. If you can’t do that, nobody will play and your party will be a bust. Ideally, you also need to see how your prospective guests conduct themself at an event. This is not just about whether they manage not to be gropey or creepy- couples can also be a lot of trouble if they aren’t relaxed with swinging and fights and crying are a buzz-kill at any event. There is absolutely no substitute for getting out there in person, meeting people at real events and seeing how they act. Even if they aren’t your personal type for sexual play, having good, friendly swingers in your social network is really valuable. Which leads us to…
8. Only doing your own events and not attending others. There is a lot of give and take in any connection or relationship, whether it is business, friendship or swinging. If you don’t attend the events of others when invited, but expect them to come to yours, you’ll be in for a really small turnout. You absolutely need to attend a wide variety of events to develop the skills you need to host successfully- it only takes one element to be wrong and the whole party fails. Part of this is attending commercial events to build your experience and personal network (which you need to cultivate and maintain! Nobody likes to be contacted just when you need to make up the numbers for an event) and part of this is showing support to those you’ve already met by helping them and showing up to the events they invite you to. Small, private events can be great fun, and you’ll bond with some of the best people you’ll meet in your life, as well as getting more ideas for things to do at your own party and pitfalls to avoid.

How to host a party- How do you build a pool of guests?

1. Cultivate friendships. When you go to events, talk to people and exchange details. Sites like Fabswingers or Fetlife are good for this, but ultimately nothing substitutes for a real life phone number. Talk to people you don’t necessarily want to play with yourself. Keep in touch with them. When you want to know how to host a swinger party, the art of keeping in touch is vital
2. Play with people at events. There are many ways to play. Even if you wouldn’t necessarily consider someone as a full sexual partner for some reason, there are options to do some light impact play, a bit of dominance, give or receive a foot massage, and similar activities, that entertain people and allow you to show bonding and acceptance. Knowing how to host a swinger party is knowing how to make connections.
3. Have a social media presence. You need to be on some of the larger, appropriate sites, otherwise how will anyone find you? When you have spare time, go through and look for people to add to your pool of connections on a fairly regular basis. When you want to know how to host a swinger party, you need to now how to network. Post photos and status updates regularly. Logging in tends to put you back to the top of searches, and sometimes people who are just what you want will seek you out and find you. Of course, you’ll also have a lot of spammy cut-and-paste messages that are sent out blanket to everyone, a lot of entitled creeps and enough dick pics to wallpaper the Sistine Chapel, but no good things come without patience and hard work.
4. Set aside time to meet people informally on a regular basis. How to host a swinger party? Put in the groundwork. This can either be as a ‘date’ or formal vetting if they have expressed an interest in coming to an event you’ve publicised. It’s far more time-efficient to have people agree to meet you at socials or munches. You can arrange to meet several people at once, the environment is less pressured and you can see how well they mix and mingle with others. Anyone who isn’t willing or able to attend a social environment and conduct themselves in a friendly way will be hard work at a full event.
5. Join chat groups and participate. Whenever there is a group going, join it, or start your own! These are often based around specific events, ongoing events or sexual interests. There are a number of platforms (Telegram, Wire, Whatsapp, etc) and they give you varying levels of privacy (in terms of whether they show your phone number and link your Facebook account to your new libertine contacts, and also whether you suddenly get notified that your boss or your Gran has just joined the app where you have your delectable torso selfie on show). Set the groups to silent and check in periodically to comment and chat with people. you’ll develop deeper friendships with them and find out which people are most on your wavelength.
6. Have more friends than you could possibly imagine you’d need. You want to know how to host a swinger party? This is key. In a way, doing smaller events well is more difficult than running a larger event- the people you put together really have to match well. This being said, trying to start off by running a commercial-size event simply won’t work. You need to build connections with people and a good reputation as a party host on the scene before you even consider moving up from free or break-even small events to anything of moderate size. Consider hosting a small dinner party with one or two couples, put together a social meet-up or munch at a vanilla venue or put together a group to attend a swinger club together. Even putting together these small, limited aspects will give you an indication of the work, complexity and time investment involved in organising a group of people- and this is all long before you are responsible for ensuring their enjoyment and sexual pleasure as part of the deal!

How to host a swinger party? Ultimately, my lovely libertines, this is a labour of love. As with unicorn hunting, there is a lot to learn, and a lot to get wrong as you work towards your aspirations. It is not quick, it is not easy, and it is certainly not massively profitable. Even most of the well established events companies have lost money hand-over-fist for years. When you pay your ticket price, you pay for a venue (amazingly hard to find), security, staff, the touches that add luxury, and all the background work that has gone into advertising, sourcing customers and building a brand identity that people want to be associated with. You can’t replicate this overnight. What you can do, however, is begin with the steps I’ve set you above, and next week we will move onto step 2: How to run the chat group for your event.

Happy hunting, baby ducklings!

xx

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