Throw Your Own Luau!

How to host a Hawaiian party, wherever you are

• Lu'au are best held outdoors, weather permitting. Decorate with tiki torches (they're inexpensive, drive away mosquitoes, and are available at most garden and hardware stores), flowers, more flowers, and as many green plants as possible. Borrow or rent foliage if you don't have it on hand.
  
  
• Lu'au dress is casual! Recommend to your guests the following attire: For men and boys, aloha shirts and khaki shorts or pants. For women and girls, aloha-print sundress or long wrap-around skirt with tank top or light, short-sleeved blouse. Feet should be bare or wearing what we in Hawai'i call "slippers" (often called "flip flops" elsewhere in the world). No socks, nylons, dress shirts or ties allowed.
  
  
• Greet each guest with a lei, hug, and a kiss on the cheek. Lei are most frequently made of flowers, shells or kukui nuts, though they're also made of bone, feathers, ti leaves and other plant materials. Shell lei are the cheapest, and will give your lu'au an authentic feel. If you have lots of flowers on hand, you can make your own lei by stringing them together, through their centers, with string or floss threaded on a sturdy needle. While lei are most often worn around the neck, for women they can also be worn like a crown on the head (haku style) and around the wrists and ankles — particularly during impromptu hula performances.
  
  
• If you have flowers left over from lei-making, encourage your female guests to wear one tucked behind an ear. A Hawaiian wahine (woman) will traditionally wear a flower on the right side if she is single, and on the left if she's spoken for. (It is said this is because the left ear is closer to the heart.)
  
  
• At a lu'au it's traditional to sit on straw mats, on the ground. Gather as many low tables as you can for your guests to dine on. Old matchstick-style window shades make great table coverings and "chairs."
  
  
• The imu ceremony (where the pig is lifted from its underground oven) usually takes place at sunset.
  
  
• Lu'au food is served buffet-style. All dishes go on the buffet table at the same time, guests line up and "grind," as we say in the Islands — sometimes for hours!
  
  
• Like many other things in Hawai'i, lu'au are casual. Kick off your shoes, serve the food on paper plates, and enjoy the company of good friends.