I've been trying to get time to write this post for a little bit, but I've had preparations for bonfire night, the school harvest dance last night, and a Halloween pumpkin competition for the children so it's been a bit crazy.

I'm kind of new to accompanying my husband on work parties and just wanted to put down my thoughts and experiences so far and other people might have their own ideas and suggestions.

We've gone to dinners and garden parties with work people, so i'm sort of fine with meeting people and making small talk most of the time but normally I am busy doing hostessing (and playing with children sometimes!) and talking to other wives so this was a bit more intense.

The two parties i've attended so far were ones where my husband was a client and they were for networking and keeping clients happy

Preparation

My husband was a darling and wanted to make sure I knew who we might be meeting, so we had a look on linkdin and he showed me who was hosting and other people he expected to be there.

This might not be everyone's way of doing things, but I think he takes networking things as "work" not fun, so he wanted to go with a plan and people he wanted to meet in particular. It was quite fun in a way, a bit like a secret agent thing 😊

I learned the people he wanted to meet and some particular things he wanted to come up in conversation so if it came up I wasn't completely clueless!

Dressing up

The main thing i think was keeping it suited to the setting and not looking like trying too hard. I

One party was in a London restaurant/bar and very modern, so it was lots of LBDs and heels, I wanted to be able to dance a little bit and i'm not really suited to very short dresses so I went with a knee length red wrap dress and black bolero. Which did nothing to keep me warm at all and i stole hubs coat for the walk back to the hotel!

The other was in a hotel in another city and a bit older fashioned so I went for a floor length sparkly maxi dress and an updo for a classic kind of look.

How the events went

Brilliant, they were a lot of fun. As my husband said on the train down "they are trying to keep us happy, so we just need to let them play host and mingle".

I think preparing really helped me know what kind of thing to talk about and stay engaged in conversation. Some of the girlfriends there looked totally bored, but our plan was to make my husband look good and be remembered nicely by people he would contact again. I took some phone details on my phone while he chatted with one guy and he said that was great because it kept the flow of conversation.

My ideas from these things so far would be:

  • Know why your man is invited
  • Ask him what his image is so you can complement it. My guy is like "very trustworthy young family man" but if your man is like a young gogetter you'd want to fit that image, maybe talk about how he does lots of extreme sports or something?!
  • Be happy and have fun!
  • A woman can initiate conversation easier than a man sometimes with a compliment about someone's outfit and then your man can get an introduction

If anyone else has more tips that would be great!