Tips for Hosting Galentine's Day

This past weekend I hosted my first ever Galentine's Day event (an idea originally from Parks and Rec, which you KNOW I love since I wrote 7 life lessons from Parks & Rec). I invited all my local girlfriends and served brunch, the automatic unifier because who doesn't love breakfast food?! (Communists, I'm assuming.)

Some ladies who were able to make it knew each other from being bridesmaids in my wedding, but no one really knew each other...so I borrowed a few ideas from Leslie Knope to help the event be fun for everyone! Below you'll find the decor, food, and activities that we used for the morning, along with photos of how it turned out and some fun photos of friends (including my gal pal, baby Emma, who hung out, then napped, then partied some more. Girl's got her priorities in order.)

The menu:

French toast casserole, made the night before and baked the morning of.
Two breakfast casseroles, also made the night before and baked morning of (can you tell that I didn't want to be cooking right before the event?!)
Self-serve coffee bar, positioned at the entrance so people could start pouring coffee before breakfast was served.
Mimosas

"Activities":

Questions, while we ate:

I had a numbered list of questions on my phone and one person picked a number. I asked that numbered question, which everyone then took turns answering. It led to lots of fun banter even though people didn't really know each other! Then, the next person chose a number and I asked that question to the group. Etc., etc.
My questions: Favorite tv show, best book read recently, how we met & what you do, dream vacation, if you could live anywhere..., wild card (reveal anything about yourself!)

Painting nails (which we never got to because the mealtime convo was so lively!)
Playing fishbowl according to these rules (we ran out of time for this, too, so maybe next year!)