So as you can see in the picture, I threw a party last year. AEW is a pro wrestling company, much like WWE. They had this big outdoor show at Wembley Stadium in London. Sold something like 80,000 tickets. We watched live on PPV.
It’s the first time I ever threw a wrestling watch party. I invited 4 people. I bought cheese, soft pretzels, bought chips/queso. I had vodka, whiskey, beer, and 3 different THC vape pens along with edible gummies. I also had coke (the soda), barqs root beer, and one of the special novelty mountain dew flavors.
I cooked chicken, and cut the cheese into cubes with individual toothpicks. I got out my good plates. And used the projector to make the screen 90 inches.
Only 2 people showed up. Nobody ate hardly anything. Nobody drank anything. Hardly anything was said. This picture was taken AFTER the party. We went through 1 bag of chips, and 1 1/2 jars of queso.
I literally could have just bought 1 bag of chips, 2 jars of queso, and saved $100 and 2 days of prep work.
I even had 2 different styles of BBQ sauce for the chicken.
Yes, it’s a year later, and I’m still mildly infuriated over it!
Also, having been on the other side of such a situation: it’s not cool to pressure or guilt trip your guests. Either be hospitable and let them do whatever they want, or don’t invite them.
If people aren’t hungry, then they aren’t hungry. Maybe they are on a diet, maybe they misunderstood OP’s intention and ate beforehand. Maybe they are recovering from something and don’t want to eat too much.
And as for the two that did not showed up. It’s a good practice to reconfirm the night before. Sometimes people forget. Sometimes life gets in the way.
If they did reconfirm and still didn’t show up and did not have a good excuse, then I would start looking for better friends.
Hope OP has better success next time. I do understand that the situation sucks.
But it’s also a situation that, in my opinion, is preventable.
It’s why for board gaming, nowadays we plan on this weird mix of snacks: Most is just bagged stuff so we can always not open bags, and the little fresh stuff that there is - usually one guy who loves to bake - is not done just for that evening, he makes a whole lot, brings some to board gaming and the rest goes to colleagues in the office.
And if we know before hand that nobody has eaten but we all want a major meal, we’ll order something and in turn plan for even less snacks.
For DnD night I’ll usually make stuff that’s good for leftovers.
Speaking of… I need to go get stuff for chili.