The services you can offer as a small business running theme parties are extensive. They are:
Design
Catering
Providing entertainers
Costumes
Marquees
Lighting
Decorations
Floral displays
Photographs
Video of the party
By setting up your own workshop you can employ a team of freelancers (as and when you need them) to make the sets and props for the themed parties. If this is too costly, the alternative route is to commission a props company.
All of the other services can be purchased or hired from other companies. If you have a flair for photography or filming, then you could do that yourself.
From the first party, start building up a portfolio of photographs taken during each theme party, to show new potential clients. If you need something to show before you can get anyone interested in hiring you for the first party, ask freelance prop and costume makers if you can purchase photographs of some of their work, for a small fee or to have them for free in return for promising to hire them for future work.
Virtually Anything Goes
Spend time working out really unusual theme parties. You can hire out country houses and have balloon parties, where the guests are all taken up in air balloons. Another theme idea is a classic car party. All the guests are treated to a drive in a fleet of Bentleys and Jaguars for instance. Or, a James Bond theme party, thrown in a hall decked out as a casino. The combinations are limitless, once you start thinking about it.
Work out as many ideas as you can and then list them in a brochure to entice clients to be bold and go for unusual themes. Encourage potential clients to make certain their party tops anything their friends have done. Good-natured snobbery is attached to parties, with friends vying to outdo one another and throw the best party. This can be used to your advantage if done subtly, e.g. 'you could go one better than your friend's party by having...' and suggest something even more extravagant.
Look Alike Agencies
Don't forget the look alike agencies. They are very useful for theme parties. It opens the door to having famous characters as part of the party's set. After the first performance of the ballet, Cinderella at the Piccadilly Theatre, the world premiere celebration party was held at the Savoy Hotel. The entrance to the Lancaster Room was piled high with sand bags and camouflage netting and other second world war paraphernalia and we were all greeted by a Churchill look alike. This was because the ballet had been set in the second world war.
Even the tickets are designed with the theme in mind. They are large brown tickets like labels with a white string through the top. Printed on one side: Evacuee's full name: (name handwritten in ink) Destination: (The Savoy Hotel (Lancaster room) Entrance Via the River Bunker - all handwritten) and Please display in full view to aid evacuation.
On the other side of the ticket: Matthew Bourne and Katharine Dore for Adventures in Motion Pictures require you to evacuate the theatre immediately following the performance to attend the world premiere celebration of Matthew Bourne's Production of Prokofieff's CINDERELLA. Underneath the title of ballet, looking like a black stamp are the words, On His Majesty's Service. Further down the ticket it reads, Dress: 40's glamour/dress uniform/ black tie. This is followed by: Entry strictly by invitation only, Gas masks to be carried at all times, Rations on arrival, Ovaltine at 2.30am and Blackout at 3am.
What great attention to detail! It's a brilliant demonstration on how to run a successful theme party.