It’s a truth universally acknowledged that such happiness comes when good people gather together. And when they celebrate the works of the witty author Jane Austen by playing games based on her works, even more happiness abounds!

Here’s how you too can have a Jane-ite Game Night!

1. Invitations

Use the Canva app or the Canva website here to make an elegant invite in minutes. Then text it to all your friends. The one above is what I used for my Galentine’s party recently. You don’t have to wait for Galentine’s or Valentine’s Day though, do it anytime of year! I cut off my address from the invitation, for privacy’s sake, but be sure to include yours.

2. Food

You could get super fancy with this but I didn’t want food to be my focus. I wanted simplicity in this aspect. So I asked guests to bring potluck finger food. I didn’t bother to make the food Regency Era themed but if you want to do so, go for it! The book shown above will help. (FTC disclosure: the link above is my amazon affiliate link. I receive a small commission if you buy the book through that link.) I always want to make sure protein is served at meals, so I assembled mini shish-ka-bobs with chunks of mozzarella cheese wrapped in basil leaves, sliced deli meat, avocado bites, and cherry tomatoes. Guests brought chips, candy, bar cookies, and berries. So not authentically Austenish but still delicious!

3. Dress

I invited guests to wear Regency Era clothing, with corsets optional. Think floor length, empire waist dresses, like the one above. I was blessed to borrow this dress shown below from my married daughter. It’s so beautiful! With her bigger bustline as a nursing mama to a 5 month old, she doesn’t fit it currently. So she lent it to me. I so enjoyed it!

She found it thrifting. Can you believe it? Amazing! I love it! I wore my comfy white Isaac Mizrash designer top, underneath the drees, to increase the neckline. (It’s one of my thrifting treasures from last August.) I added a tiny dusty pink rose necklace and a long pearl necklace. Then I had some comfy neutral pinkish/beige flats for my feet that coordinated perfectly. I found those thrifting too!

My daughter wore a nightgown I had given to her for her birthday that she tied high with a sash. It was on her wishlist, from amazon, shown above. The description labels it “Victorian,” but hey with a high waisted sash it looked Regency. One of my friends guests wore a dress she bought on amazon. I was surprised to see the many affordable options for Jane Austen type dresses there. Here is another one from amazon below.

But if you don’t want to pay more than $30 for an outfit, go thrifting!

This link here has great ideas for how to find Regency Era dress at thrift stores. If I had not been able to borrow the dress from my daughter I would have worn a blue lacy dress, from my firstborn’s wedding, with some kind of long white skirt underneath to make floor-length. Hopefully I would have found it thrifting or crowdsourced it. Then I would have tied a white piece of fabric under my bustline to make an empire waistline or a blue ribbon. You could do the same thing. Take an elegant dress you already have and tie a sash right below your breasts to make a high, empire waistline. If it’s not floor-length, wear a skirt underneath to hit the floor. Then accessorize with long white gloves and long pearls, which are also surprisingly inexpensive at amazon.

4. Decorations

See if you can rustle up from your home or borrow a pretty tea set, baskets, flowers, floral tablecloths, elegant vases, etc. Then set them up around where you will be serving the food and playing the game. If you will be playing games you will want the center of the table cleared out most likely for the game so put the decorations on end tables or other horizontal surfaces on the side of the room.

I decided to trade out the wintry, snowy and Valentine-y picture books on my ledges above my windows for Jane Austen books.

I put a ton of Jane books on hold at two libraries. I should have picked them up the day before the party and not just a few hours before the party. Lesson learned! I ran out of time (to be fair I helped my daughter, son-in-law and 3 grandchildren move that morning). I only got one ledge decorated but that was still fun, as shown below. If you don’t have ledges you could set up stacks of Jane books on tables or tops of bookshelves in the room.

I had intended to take down the gingham/polka dot heart garland above and make a new garland with images of the black and white illustrations by Charles Brock from the first edition of Pride and Prejudice. I used this website over here and copied the images from it into a Google Doc.

I got the Google Doc all done and had grand plans to finish the project. I was going to print the doc, cut out the images and glue them onto some real blue pennants that I cut out with my scalloped-edged scissors. I also had envisioned maybe adding some lace. It would have looked something like this garland below, which is on sale at etsy.com, over here. (No affiliate link.)

Etsy has so many cute ones! I like this one too…

You can get it here.

My intention was to create my garland with the same colors and vibe as the Jane Game below. Alas I ran out of time so I just stuck with the heart garland above. It’s cute but not exactly elegant. Next year I’ll finish the vintage-looking P and P garland. It’s going to be so beautiful!

5. Entertainment

All the above is fun and all, but the most important feature of the night was the games! That was the point of the whole event. My plan was to play all three games shown above. We did 2/3, having to forego the Jane Game as it got to 9 PM and we were just wrapping up Marrying Mr. Darcy.

This was sooooo unfortunate as I got the game last summer at the Orem Savers thrift store for only $2.90. I have been dying to play it with a crowd. I’ve only played it once, with one other player, my sister Emily, so now I have to wait even longer. Oh well!

The Pride and Prejudice game is a roll the die and move mechanism, so not the best. I found at the Provo Deseret Industries for $2 a few years ago. 2 bucks! Can you believe it? I have been saving it for just such a night! It’s out of print and over $60 on ebay. The game has four of the couples of P and P as the pawns. You move them along the paths to end up at the parish church to get married. If I were to do the night over, I would dispense with the rules of the game, and just have the players answer the questions without rolling the die. Then move maybe move six spaces if they get it right without multiple choice, or three if they get it right with multiple choice. Or one if they get it right by phoning a friend/getting a hint. Winner would be who has the most points after 30 minutes or so.

So that one above is trivia based. It has questions on the P and P book and regency life. It’s kind of like Trivial Pursuit where you race to get to the end with a question answered from each category in order to win. Then we played Marrying Mr. Darcy.

It’s a simulation of the basic premise of P and P, and all JA books, which is women working/waiting/dreaming/planning/scheming and executing their plans to be courted and then receive a marriage proposal. They do this by increasing their character points and dowry, all within the proper bounds of Regency Era society, of course. The main characters of Pride and Prejudice are in this game.

The game involves two phases: courtship and marriage, involving all the major single females and suitors from the book. So fun especially if you all ham it up! I was Elizabeth and I was successful at winning a proposal from Mr. Darcy, but I did not win the game. I had fun anyway, especially when I had my Elizabeth and Darcy cards “march” down the aisle humming the wedding march after they married. Everybody laughed.

The Emma expansion is available too, to bring in the characters from the Emma book. It’s on my wishlist!

Guess what? You can get print-and-play editions of Marrying Mr. Darcy and the Emma Expansion. Right over here! For less than $10 for both! So if you are up to printing and cutting, go for it. Just scroll down the page and you should see them. I think I’ll get the Emma expansion there! (I’ll pass on the zombie version, no thank you!)

6. Prizes and Party Favors

I used the following for prizes and party favors, all from amazon.com. (All amazon links in this post are affiliate links. I receive a small commission if you buy any of these items through these links.)

The above is supposed to be a journal but it’s more like a notebook with thin cardboard-like covers and basic quality lined paper. The cover is pretty so it’s fun for a basic notebook. You can get it here.

Everyone went home with at least one of these zippered bags, and some of them got two, depending on if they won a game. You can find them here. I resisted taking the one in the lower bottom right, as I was in the midst of getting rid of some of my games and books because I had reached my shelf limit. I didn’t want to attract reverse energy by having that bag in my home, lol.

I also got Jane Austen stickers! I put them all in a basket and let everyone pick 10. I plan on putting mine on my laptop. It was fun to watch my guests ooh and ahh over them and pick out their favorites. I got my stickers here.

I got this game below from amazon for the party and had all intentions of playing it that night. I completely forgot to pull it out. You could use it as a prize too. It’s over here. It’s a deck of 52 cards, including Jane Austen book trivia. It comes with instructions to use the cards for four different games. Now it’s in one of my baskets by the dining room table to played as a quiz game during mealtime. for me, when I’m dining solo, which does occasionally happen now that I have just one child left at home. Or I will play with my married daughter when she visits. (My favorite games for mealtime are over here.)

I also wanted to print out bookmarks from digital downloads on sale at etsy, and ran out of time. So many beautiful ones abound. See the ones above and below.

So many more Jane Austen related fun things are at etsy, as shown here, and amazon. Jane Austen lip balm, anyone? That will be a prize next year for sure.

7. Music!

Don’t forget the background music to add to the ambience! Use Spotify or YouTube and search for Jane Austen movie soundtracks. We used the P and P BBC movie soundtrack, which I adore.

If you want to be super authentic and have the money, hire a pianist to play the sheet music below. He or she can make Mary Bennet jealous with superb piano playing. I found this at my local public library. You can get it on amazon. The theme music from P and P by Carl Davis (in the video above) is my current favorite song to play in the morning to rally people out of bed for family prayer.

That’s it! I hope you have just as fun at your Jane-ite Game Night as I did with mine! It’s now a personal tradition to do it every year in January or February, another fun thing to look forward in the January doldrums after Christmas is over.