Love / Partnership: Alternative weddings and receptions, elopement receptions, commitment ceremonies, handfastings, engagement parties, rehearsal dinners, anniversary gatherings, vow renewals.

Birth / Family: Baby showers, naming celebrations, adoption celebrations, chosen-family gatherings, coming-of-age parties, sweet sixteens and quinceañeras with alternative aesthetics.

Identity / Becoming: Name-change celebrations, coming-out parties, transition milestones, sobriety anniversaries, major personal reinvention, “new chapter” parties, finally-leaving-a-bad-job parties.

Age / Survival: Birthdays, milestone birthdays, “still here” parties, elder celebrations, retirement gatherings, reunions of old scene friends.

Death / Remembrance: Wakes, memorial receptions, celebrations of life, death anniversaries, remembrance dinners, scattering-of-ashes gatherings, private cemetery or graveside gatherings followed by a reception.

Leaving / Returning: Going-away parties, welcome-home gatherings, relocation send-offs, tour send-offs/homecomings, deployment or long-travel returns.

Home / Place: Housewarmings, apartment-warmings, backyard gatherings, private garden parties, bonfires, cabin weekends, private holiday gatherings.

Creative life: Album-release listening parties among friends, private house concerts, zine-release parties, art-show-afterparties held privately, band/project anniversaries where the attendees are actually the participants’ social circle.

Relationship endings: Divorce parties, breakup recovery gatherings, “uncoupling” dinners, reclaim-the-house parties.

Seasonal / Ritual: Halloween parties, solstice gatherings, equinox dinners, Samhain-style remembrance gatherings, Yule parties, masquerades, costume parties, moon gatherings, private ritual-adjacent social events.

Scene-family occasions: Old-club reunions, “we all survived the 90s” gatherings, private dark-dance nights, record-listening nights, themed house parties, goth nights, friends-only DJ nights.

Just because: Cocktail parties, dinner parties, dance parties, record nights, movie nights, backyard DJ sets, private “dress beautifully and be strange together” evenings.