Oh! Those IKEA room displays! Entire rooms full of furniture, lighting, rugs and notions. Any one of those rooms would be a great place to sit and entertain friends. They look so comfortable and inviting!

It was an invitation that Jason Adair couldn't pass up. He decided to have a Fancy Dress Party at IKEA.

Before the pary, he invited me along to a mission-planning/brainstorming session. We scoped out which rooms would work best for a large gathering, checked the location of employee kiosks and established the availability of electrical outlets.

The West Sacramento IKEA is a huge store with tons of merchandise, but shoplifting is apparently not a concern, because the upper level is left pretty much unsupervised. The possiblilities were amazing! We were both fairly confident that a group, particularly a well-dressed group would not be kicked out... but you never know.

As insurance against getting thrown out, Jason made up official-looking invitations.

The party was scheduled to start at 7:00 pm on Saturday, on the second floor of the West Sacramento IKEA.  It would start at the cafeteria. After dinner, guests would retire to one or more of the living rooms for games.

The attire was semi-formal, and guests were encouraged to bring board games.

On the evening of the party, I arrived a little early and picked up some wine goblets and a corkscrew on the first level sales floor.  I ran upstairs and found an open table. Within minutes, guests began arriving. Right away there were 10-15 of us, ready to eat.

I opted for the meatballs and potato for $5.99. We must have looked as if we were a wedding party, in the buffet line.

Guests continued to arrive during dinner, and by 8 p.m., there were about 28 people.

Dinner was over, and we streamed out of the cafeteria and headed to the showrooms.

please continue reading page two of the IKEA Fancy Dress Dinner Party