April 15, 2012 is the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Sounds like an excellent excuse for a themed dinner party. (Or at least a cocktail party; you could serve gin and titonics.)

The theme could go a lot of different ways. You could have a fancy dinner or tea where everyone dresses in period costume (there are some good ideas for invitations here and here); you could take it a step further and make it a role-playing party (make your invitations look like boarding passes and assign each guest a passenger whom they’re supposed to play), or send waterlogged invitations and tell everybody to show up drowned.

Decoration will depend largely upon your theme and could range from refined Edwardian to nautical. Guests might enter on a red carpet–assuming you’re allowing them to be First Class passengers rather than the wretches in steerage–and you might also designate various rooms in your house as an observation deck, lounge bar, wheelhouse, etc. If you prefer a more disaster-y theme, you can decorate with plastic life preservers and netting and strew seashells and dried starfish around as well. Either way,an ice-sculpture centerpiece would be a nice touch.

The Titanic Historical Society sells a number of reproduction items that might be useful as decorations, and they even have a subsection devoted to themed dinner parties.

A list of the menus (First and Second Class Breakfast, Luncheon, and Dinner; Third Class Bill of Fare) on the day the ship sank is here, and an expanded discussion of the First Class dinner menu is here. There are also at least two cookbooks devoted to these menus, Last Dinner On the Titanic and RMS Titanic “Dinner Is Served”.

For authentic music, check out Music Aboard the Titanic, And the Band Played On, or Titanic: Music As Heard on the Fateful Voyage.

If you’ve been feeling the urge to dress up and have a party, this is an excellent opportunity.