How to Throw a "Gone With the Wind" Party

Bring the spirit of the Old South to your next celebration with a "Gone With the Wind" theme party. Evoke the feel of a 19th-century Southern plantation with vintage china and heavy wood furniture, serve regional food and drinks, and dress as characters straight out of the classic novel and movie adaptation. It's sure to be a soiree that would make Scarlett O'Hara feel right at home.

Decorate your invitations with photos of Georgia's state flower, the Cherokee rose, and use fancy gold lettering to evoke the feel of Southern high society. List the party's address as "Tara Plantation," and include the name of a character or two from "Gone With the Wind" as co-hosts of the party. Encourage guests to come dressed in their best "Gone With the Wind" costumes, such as Civil War soldiers' uniforms or elegant three-piece suits for men and formal gowns with full skirts and petticoats for women.

Make your party space feel like a Civil War-era Southern mansion. Hang velvet drapes with large valances on windows in rich colors such as gold, green or red. Avoid plastic tables and chairs and use heavy wood furniture. Use antique or antique-looking, floral-patterned china, porcelain bowls, crystal glasses and fine-linen tablecloths and napkins. Add more period items to your space, such as candelabras, oil lamps and antique clocks, and set copies of Margaret Mitchell's novel on side tables. Hang prints of movie stills from "Gone With the Wind" in ornate frames, and make floral arrangement centerpieces with Cherokee roses and cotton branches.

Look to Scarlett O'Hara's descriptions of food in "Gone With the Wind" for inspiration when designing your menu, and serve items that wouldn't be out of place at a Georgia plantation. Put "ham at one end of the table and fried chicken at the other" as Scarlett described in the novel, and serve side items such as collard greens, fried squash, snap beans and stewed okra. For dessert, make Georgia peach cobbler and a red-velvet cake reminiscent of Scarlett's famous red dress. Set out pitchers of sweet iced tea labeled "Tara Tea," and provide a classically Southern cocktail such as mint juleps with Southern bourbon and fresh mint.

Have an old-fashioned dance party featuring Civil War-era folk songs or music from the "Gone With the Wind" movie soundtrack. Test partygoers' knowledge with a trivia contest, using questions about "Gone With the Wind," Civil War history and trivia about the South. Give the trivia contest winner a folding accordion fan or a Rhett Butler-style fake mustache as a prize. For party favors, send people home from your soiree with paper parasols and copies of the "Gone With the Wind" novel or movie.