You know how when you plan a party, you get sooo excited about it, and in your head, you’ve already put on your sexiest dress, your reddest lipstick, your highest heels, and you feel like you’ve already danced too widly and drank too much and woke up with a hangover, before it’s even happened?

That’s kind of how I feel about my big two-book launch party in May. I’ve been planning it for months now, getting all the stuff for the AWESOME goodie bags, figuring out what kind of fun stuff we’ll have at the party–blowouts from celeb stylists! makeovers by celeb makeup artists! a fashion show! shopping! what kind of food (mini pizzas!) and drink (Blood Kisses – basically a cosmo combo of my two book titles Blue Bloods and Sun Kissed for 21-and-overs) as well as Glaceau Vitamin Water and Tab Energy!

I even have the dresses I’m going to wear– a black satin Marc Jacobs dress with a string of pearls for Blue Bloods and then halfway through I’ll change into a sun-splashed Diane Von Furstenberg dress for Sun-Kissed! My family is flying out for the event, as well as some friends from Los Angeles, and I hope to see all my friends from New York on the big day…

But I know that on the day of the party, I’ll want to do nothing more than STAY HOME.

Because, really, how can any party exceed the expectations I’ve already built up in my head?

Ever since college, the start of my party-planning career, I have always been stricken by total party anxiety before the event–

What if no one shows up?

What if it totally sucks?

Maybe we just won’t open the door. Maybe we’ll just tell people the party is canceled!

I looooove throwing parties. When I lived in the West Village, the back yard of my building connected with the two other buildings, and I threw HUGE parties in my backyard every summer… I got kind of famous for throwing parties, and I still have fond, fond memories of every party I’ve thrown.

I swore I would never grow up to be the kind of person who threw boring dinner parties where no one got smashed and the most exciting thing that happened was a charades game… UGH!

My kind of parties were always the ones with the lights-out, open-bar, scandalous hookups, and blaring house music…the ones where you wake up and three of your best friends are passed out on the floor the next morning, along with one couple no one knows holed up in the bathroom…

Then we got really nice furniture.

And well, that was the end of that.

Before, we’d always let the apartment get trashed (we’d find cigarettte butts wedged into the hardwood floors, etc) but now, no way. Although I like to think our dinner parties aren’t boring since I’m very generous with the wine bottle. And we have never resorted to Charades yet. Although we have been known to bust out the Trivial Pursuit. (Ach, I’m cringing.)

So..the party… everyone is invited, and it’s going to be so fun, and I can’t wait for it to be all over so I can just resume my regular life again…

And if on the day of YOUR big party, you feel like locking yourself in your room and not going out until all the guests leave, I totally understand…