How To Throw The Ultimate Hogwarts Dinner

Last updated on 27 December 2024

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You’re not even ready for this epic Hogwarts Dinner event.

Each year the Youth Group Leaders at my church* throw an epic Hogwarts Dinner for the youth, and it takes up the entire building. While I’m not a youth leader, I put my hand up this year to help out, and it was one of the best nights of my entire life. The amount of work that was put in was phenomenal, and every single minute spent DIY-ing signs, printing posters, painting banners, crafting activities for the kids was 100% worth the 14 hours I spent at church on the Friday.

*I know what you’re thinking, ‘Harry Potter? In a church?!’ Yes indeed, the perfect location for a Great Hall, for classrooms, for common rooms, for fun to be had.

Nearly all the rooms around our stone church were filled with Harry Potter related items, 6 of which were classrooms, complete with youth-leader Professors. Yours truly was Professor Sprout and the Herbology classroom was pretty neat, if I do say so myself.

How the Hogwarts Dinner and evening played out

The instructions for the youth attending, prior to arriving at the Hogwarts Dinner, was to wear their school uniform, or to dress up as a character from Harry Potter. They did such a great job and all the kids (even the ‘too cool’ teens) wore either their school gear or had cloaks, house scarves and wands at the ready. One girl even dressed all in gold as a Snitch.

The front door had a lovely Platform 9 3/4 sign on it, with brick-wall curtains that they walked through. When the kids got into the building, they were greeted by Dumbledore at the door and were given a report card. On the card were the classes they needed to attended, and a space for the teachers to score them depending on how well they participated and achieved in the class. At the end of the night the kids with the highest scores went to Honeydukes first (see below).

Dinner was first, however, then after they had had their fill they had 10 minutes to complete the activity in each class. We had to limit the number of students attending at any one time, so some of them didn’t get to go to all of the subjects.

The upcoming series

Because there was just so much going on around the building, I thought this needed to be broken up into different posts so you can fully get the idea. This series will be cut down into the following posts:

The Great Hall (including Owl Mail, Honeydukes, and The Three Broomsticks)
Charms
Ancient Runes
Muggle Studies
Defense Against the Dark Arts
Herbology
Potions
Flying Class

As you can already tell, this was no mere dinner party. Let’s dive right into the Great Hall, shall?

The Great Hall

If you’ve ever been inside an old church then you’ll know that the main room is the perfect setting for a Hogwarts Great Hall. As well as the main dining tables, and head teachers’ table, we used the spaces around the floor to create Honeydukes, and Owl Mail station, and The Three Broomsticks. Along the sides of the main floor space there are several other rooms or alcoves, which we used for Muggle Studies and Ancient Ruins, with Charms running down the centre. More on that coming in a future post.

Decor

For decor in The Great Hall, we had hung huge House Banners from the pillars, with one of each house on each side. These were made with printed crests of the houses, simply stuck to the fabric. For the Quidditch game downstairs we used painted banners (more on that soon!).

No Great Hall would be complete without the famous floating candles.

The youth group sat on pews (seriously, the church is the perfect place for this!) along long tables, while the heads of the 4 Hogwarts houses – Slytherin, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw – occupied a Head Table. We decorated the tables with runners down the centre, and the head table at the Hogwarts crest on it too. You can find Harry Potter House Banners Free Printables on Paper Trail Design, or check out the Harry Potter Wiki for crests: Slytherin, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw.

We also used a beautiful bronze eagle lectern which usually sits to the side of the church. It pretty much matches Dumbledore’s. The Marauder’s Map sitting on it I made the day before, using this printable on Instructables. It was very easy to put together. You just need to print it on A3, cut it carefully (a guillotine would be best) and have a little patience when it comes to gluing it together. We ended up giving this one away as a prize to whomever could find Peter Pettigrew in the Great Hall (aka toy rat).

Activity

The kids’ activity in the Great Hall was literally eating. Our spectacular team in the kitchens prepared an incredible meal of meatballs, vegetables, and bread rolls. For dessert, the kitchen team had poured caramel sauce around the inside of a mason jar and placed a scoop of ice cream inside. The kids then got that jug and a can of A&W Cream Soda, so they could pour it in themselves, and make a Butterbeer.

Owl Mail

Decor

Using the baptism font as a bird cage stand (thank you, Church), we set up an Owl Mail station with a few tables, and a big black background. We had a Hedwig statue, and the lovely golden bird cage. On one of the tables we stuck a large gold owl, and had a basket on top for paper on the other. Propped up against a rail was a blackboard, where we wrote up the instructions of what they were supposed to do.

We hired the owl and cage from First Scene Costume Hire in Auckland, though you could make your own. Check out this video on Red Ted Art to DIY your own quills, and we just used brown paper as the parchment and rolled it up, tied it with string and put it in the basket.

Ultimate Hogwarts Dinner Party. Owl Mail.

Activity

The instructions for the Owl Mail station were as follows: “Write your letter on a scroll and post it in the bird cage. One of our owls will deliver it for you.” They used actual feather quills and ink to write their messages, then rolled them back up and popped them in the bird cage.

Honeydukes

Decor

Honeydukes was used as prizes for the end of the night’s activities. We bought a heap load of sweets and fill jars with them (much like I did for the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play reading decor), along with fantastic baking that the youth leaders and some of the parents had made (all themed, of course), and displayed them at different levels so they could all be seen. We added fairy lights around them, and some really cool bulb-lights. (Apologies for the slightly off photo.)

Download the Honeydukes sign here, and print it on A3s. Stick onto cardboard, making sure you line everything up correctly. Then cut around the cardboard.

Activity

The kids with the highest marks from their classes got to go to Honeydukes first. Everyone got something from the ‘shop’, but the ones who did the best got to choose first.

The Three Broomsticks

Decor

Set up at our mini kitchen in the entrance was The Three Broomsticks. This was really easy to do, because we just hung a sign behind the bar, and served drinks to the kids as they came in.

I have a feeling this Three Broomsticks sign was made by someone in the previous years, but you can find a bunch of free printables on Pinterest.

So that was the Great Hall for our Hogwarts Dinner. You’ll be pleased to know that this is just the beginning of the epic Hogwarts Dinner party series.

Check out all the posts: