Throw a House Party Guests Won’t Forget : Entertainment: Elegant but affordable touches like trumpeters or an English butler can make all the difference.

Kathy Miller knows how to throw a house party.

“There’s nothing we haven’t done,” says Miller, owner of Activities Inc., a party-planning service in Newport Beach.

At various fetes, she has set up human buffet tables with talking heads situated among the cheese and pate, planted a rude waiter or a couple staging a ferocious fight among the guests, and arranged a black-tie affair where guests ate with their hands (the client was tired of stuffy, sit-down dinners).

“Any time you can create an atmosphere conducive to mingling, or get people talking, it helps break the ice,” Miller says.

While human buffet tables might not be your style, you can create an elegant ambience the next time you invite friends over by adding these classy but affordable touches:

Imagine arriving at a party and having a trio of trumpet players herald your arrival. Most people expect such an honor to be reserved for royalty or presidents. Hosts who want to treat their party guests like bluebloods, however, can hire trumpeters from Fanfares d’Elegance of Lakewood.

The trumpeters will arrive in black tuxedos or Renaissance-style garb, then blow their horns as guests enter the party.

“Guests like to feel regal. It brings out the goose bumps,” says Owen Kirschner, director of Fanfares d’Elegance.

His trumpeters have heralded the Duke and Duchess of York at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and Pope John Paul II at a pre-Mass celebration in Los Angeles. They’ve played at grand-opening celebrations for South Coast Plaza’s Crystal Court, the Atrium at Newport Beach’s Fashion Island, and the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

Although Kirschner can provide up to 120 musicians, home entertainers can make do with one or two trumpeters for an elegant, but not ostentatious, display.

“If you’re having a party, you might have a single trumpeter welcome guests at the door and play when they go to dinner,” Kirschner says.

A Fanfares d’Elegance trumpeter costs $125 for two hours or less. For more information, call (213) 429-3732.

Playing the harp doesn’t sound like a hazardous job, but Rosalie Corson knows better.

First, she has to haul around a harp that stands six feet tall and weighs about 100 pounds--no easy feat for the petite Corson, who’s a foot shorter than her instrument.

Then she often finds herself playing outdoors under trying conditions. Sometimes she struggles to keep the harp from blowing over in a strong wind, and she knows at least one harpist who landed in a pool, harp and all.

“They have us playing on the edges of cliffs,” Corson says. “We’d be happy just to play on a quiet, calm day sitting in the shade.”

No matter what the conditions, though, harpists always manage to sound as if they just dropped down from heaven, which is why hosts choose Corson to serenade their guests at private parties.

“Harp music reminds people of angels,” Corson says. “People tell me how soothing it is. It’s not obtrusive.”

Harp music is especially suitable for small dinners and cocktail parties. Guests can carry on conversations while the harpist picks at the strings in the background.

Corson, a Santa Ana resident, charges $150 for the first hour and $50 for each additional hour. She can be reached at (714) 544-3458.

The host wanted to throw a beach bash on the Fourth of July, but he had a problem: He knew his guests would have to battle for parking spaces on the crowded streets of Laguna Beach. His solution added a touch of class to an otherwise casual affair. He hired the Majestic Valet Parking Service in Laguna Beach to park the guests’ cars.

Frank Mambeygi, owner of the valet parking service, says his valets have opened car doors for notables like Ronald Reagan and Eddie Murphy, but one need not be a VIP to be treated like one.

Valets add a special touch for private, at-home get-togethers. Uniformed attendants will help guests out of their car, then whisk away the automobile so they can proceed immediately into the party.

People want the parking service for two resons, Mambeygi says: necessity and class. Valets can solve parking shortages by maximizing the number of spaces while adding prestige to small home parties.

Valet parking costs about $100 per attendant, with one attendant able to handle 12 or 13 cars depending on the parking conditions. For information, call (714) 497-1465.

Party guests often don’t know what to make of Christopher Allen.

“You’re a butler? And you’re English?” they ask, staring at his crisp black tuxedo. Allen always answers politely in his proper English accent.

“Some people don’t know how to react to it. They don’t expect to see a butler in a small house,” Allen says.

He portrays “the standard Hollywood image” of the British butler at private parties. He greets the guests, accepts their coats and any gifts they’ve brought, serves drinks, passes around hors d’oeuvres and announces dinner. During the meal, he’s busy pouring the wine and announcing each course, describing every entree in detail.

“Otherwise a guy who’s allergic to salmon could be eating salmon mousse,” Allen explains.

After dinner, he serves coffee and cleans up.

“It’s easy for the hostess--she doesn’t have to be bothered,” he says.

His presence gives the party an air of sophistication.

“It doesn’t have the same ambience if a caterer just dropped off food in cardboard boxes,” he notes.

Allen charges $25 an hour for the British butler service. He is available through the English Domestic Service Agency in Mission Viejo. For information, call (714) 859-1088.

Folks can usually find Mark Daukas in the freezer. He was there again the other day at the walk-in freezer at Orange County Ice in Anaheim, wearing his work clothes--a ski parka, ski pants, several layers of sweaters and kneepads--as he carved his latest creation out of ice.

“As long as I’m dressed for the cold, it doesn’t bother me,” he says.

Daukas is too concerned with making great sculptures out of ice to worry about the temperature.

He has won every competition that counts in ice carving, including the 1989 international ice carving competition in Japan, and he has helped elevate ice carving into an art form.

Instead of the standard buffet dolphin, he creates intricate sculptures of flamingos, swans, hearts, sea gulls, mermaids, dragons--even a life-size Elvis. He makes a new sculpture every week for the Sunday brunch at the Ritz-Carlton in Dana Point.

“I aim to take my work out of the realm of a buffet piece and turn it into a sculpture medium,” he says.

Daukas can get fine detail in ice through his unorthodox carving methods. Instead of a chisel, he uses mostly power tools, including a dentist’s drill, to make fine cuts. “A lot of people think we use blow torches,” he says.

The only drawback to Daukas’ chilly profession: Sooner or later, all of his creations melt.

The sculptures start at $300 and can go up to $18,000 for a massive show-stopper, such as a 25-foot-long scene of Santa and his flying reindeer. For more information, call Mark Daukas Designs at (714) 760-7271.

“You’re invited”--how the host delivers those two little words often signals whether a party is going to be a smash or a sleeper.

An inventive invitation suggests that the party, too, won’t be your run-of-the-mill affair.

Creative hosts who aren’t satisfied with the printed invitations offered at stationery stores can invent their own at Classy Presents in Anaheim Hills.

The staff will help the host devise a custom invitation for every kind of party. One can choose from all kinds of paper and card stock, 80 different type styles and 60 colors of ink. A favorite photograph or piece of art can be reproduced as well.

The shop uses a computer to inscribe the invitations with calligraphy that looks like the work of a human hand, according to owner Judy Beard.

Once, for a diamond anniversary, the shop laminated the invitations with silver sprinkles so they sparkled like diamonds, she says.

The invitations cost $1 to $5 apiece, depending on the work and materials. Classy Presents also sells custom gift wrap, stationery and gifts. The shop is at 5773-A E. Santa Ana Canyon Road, Anaheim Hills. For information, call (714) 921-9699.