Eagle Scout Court of Honor Ideas

I have been dreaming of my son's Court of Honor since he was a Cub Scout. I'm so proud of all he has accomplished through the wonderful Scouts BSA program and couldn't wait to throw a big party to celebrate all of his hard work. I thought I would make a post to help other moms, dads or family members that want to throw a big event for their son or daughter's Eagle Scout Court of Honor. I hope you can find an idea or two from my son's event.   So welcome to JT's Eagle Scout Court of Honor!

Before I go any further, I wanted to give you some helpful advice.  First, please don't feel like you have to rush to get your scout's Eagle Scout Court of Honor completed.  It is perfectly fine to take 3-6 months or even more to plan this big event.  My son earned his Eagle Scout rank at the end of November, and we did not have his Court of Honor until the beginning of April.  One of the hardest things about planning a Court of Honor is finding a date that works for your family, scout leaders and the event location.  Luckily this fact may help give you the time you need to plan and prepare for the big event.

The best advice I can give for getting started on your ceremony is to purchase Mark Ray's "The Eagle Scout Court of Honor" book.  It has lots of great advice, timelines, lists of to do's, and 6 scripts for the ceremony (as well as how you can find them already typed online).  This book is a great resource and I highly recommend getting it!  One of the hardest things for me when I was planning this Court of Honor was creating a script.  I combined three scripts from two that I found in Mark's book and one online and added personal stories throughout for my son's ceremony.  

The second tip that I would give is that a Sunday afternoon is a great time to hold the Court of Honor.  More people will be able to come on a Sunday afternoon compared to a Saturday when other events like campouts, sports, weddings, etc. are already scheduled.  We had around 87 come to our son's Court of Honor and I think this was partly because it was held on a day and time convenient for so many.  

To save money, over the past year or two, I purchased items that I found on sale like the flag bunting, fleur-de-lis stands, and other items that I squirreled away hoping he would Eagle one day.  The best time to find things on sale if you want to use red, white and blue (to match the Eagle Scout pin) is after the 4th of July.  I also had a scrapbook that I created for his Cub Scout Blue and Gold crossover, and I worked on his Boy Scout digital scrapbook while he worked on advancement in Scouts BSA.  

After he officially earned his Eagle Scout rank by passing his Eagle Board of Review, I started looking for an event location. We considered several local options, but decided to have it at our family church as it was a wonderful place to not only have the ceremony in the sanctuary, but we were able to have the party in the fellowship hall and all at a reasonable price since we are members of the church. With the location found, I then moved on to the invitation. I knew I wanted something formal to mail out to scouts, friends and family. My sister is a great amateur photographer, so I got her to take some photos of my son for the invite and to use throughout the event. The best price I could find to print the invitation quickly was Walmart. I selected their premium cardstock invitation and uploaded the invite that I created. It was the same price to print one sided or double sided, so I created an image for the back that family and friends could frame if they wanted to display it in their home. Here is the invitation that I created.

From there I started working on party favor designs.  Here are the favors I created and customized for his Eagle Scout reception. 

18 Swedish Fish wrappers for the movie size candy box.

These were $1.25 per box at Dollar Tree.

24 Hershey Milk Chocolate Candy Bar wrappers.

Hershey candy bars were $4.88 at Walmart for 6.

Hershey Chocolate Nugget Wrappers for a "Scout Law" gift.  

A large bag of nuggets was $11.98 at Walmart and you can make

approximately 14 of these per bag.

Gummy Bear Bag Topper.  These were a GREAT party
favor because you can purchase a box of 54 for $12.

Finally, I created a few ornaments for guest that do not like candy or can't have sugar.  These are also a super inexpensive gift.  I created the frames from a miniature tumbling tower game that I purchased at Dollar Tree.  It comes with 72 blocks so you can create up to 18 ornaments for under $7.  That is $1.25 for the blocks, $1 for the ribbon, $3 mini eye hooks (they come in a pack of 50), and $1 for cardstock and printing.  

The total for 124 party favors was $68.50 plus the cost of card stock paper and printing tags and toppers at home.  The best price were the mini bags of gummy bears as I was able to get 54 party favors for $12 plus printing cost.  So that was twenty-five cents per party favor for the gummy bears.  Here is a picture to show you how I set up the favors for the reception.

Party Favor Table

Sign used for guests to take one party favor home.

While I was working on party favors, I started to come up with food ideas for the reception.  I didn't want it to be too elaborate as it was a midafternoon event, and I didn't need to feed the guests a meal.  Most families have a cake and some type of drink, but I wanted a little more.  Even though I love some of the amazing Eagle Scout cakes you can find online, I just couldn't see spending hundreds of dollars for a cake.  The only thing my son requested was my sister's banana pudding.  I ended up deciding to make 100 charcuterie cups and 75 dessert cups (banana pudding, chocolate cheesecake, and poundcake trifle). My husband decided he wanted to help with the menu planning, so he purchased 60 cupcakes from a local bakery.  There were so many other things that I considered and would have loved like a trail mix buffet or smore station.  Here are a few pictures of the food table.  

These were super easy to make and fairly inexpensive.  They were a much better price than doing an entire charcuterie table.  I was quoted $12 per person to create a charcuterie table which would have been around $900.  I didn't keep my receipts, so I don't have an exact price per cup, but it was around $1.50-2.00 per cup.  The best part is I didn't have a lot of leftovers like you do when you create an entire charcuterie table that you don't want to try to save as it has all been picked over by your guests.  All of the desserts were great as you could easily pick them up and carry them around.

We also made these dessert cups from scratch.  I made the pound cake 2 days before the event which was the only thing that had to be baked for these desserts.  Then we assembled all 3 desserts the day before the Court of Honor.  My hint for making these a day in advance is to make stabilized whip cream and refrigerate the desserts until 30 minutes before the event.  If you don't stabilize the whip cream, it will melt and not hold its shape.  I use a recipe that includes adding gelatin to the whip cream.  The cheesecake is a no bake recipe, and the banana pudding was cooked on the stove.  I was just planning on these and the charcuterie cups but my husband wanted cupcakes. I'm glad we had them as another treat. I could have made cupcakes a day or two in advance as well, but he wanted me to not have to make all of the food.  If you are trying to keep your costs down, you can make them yourself or get them at a grocery store for a reasonable price.  If you order them in advance, you can get them in red, white and blue or however you might like them.  Then stick cupcake toppers in them like I created for ours.  

Finally, for drinks we had tea, a special lemonade that my son sold for his salesmanship merit badge at our local farmer's market, and bottled water with a wrapper I designed for the party.  I didn't end up with a picture of the water bottle, so here is an image of the wrapper I created.

I knew I wanted special gifts to give the scout leaders that had helped JT along his trail to Eagle, so I found some large coffee cups good for campouts (for coffee drinkers), water bottles (for those that don't drink coffee), and boxes of chocolates with a purse size calculator for the ladies that help with the troop's finances.  I filled the cups and water bottles with trail mix packets.  I wanted to personalize the cups and water bottles with the leader's monograms, but I ran out of time.

Now that food and party favors were out of the way...it was time to decorate the fellowship hall.  The room was very large with high ceilings so to give it some color, my husband hung some of the flags that my son had flown while he was a scout.  These included the US Flag, and the six flags of Texas.  I also had flags from all of the military branches, but that would have been too many flags for the room.  These flags were all 5' x 3'.  

I had 10 round tables with 8 chairs around each 5' table, and a few extra chairs sprinkled around the edges of the room.  I purchased fabric tablecloths to give it a more sophisticated feel.  They were $12 per tablecloth from CV Linens.  If you want to save a little money, you can use plastic tablecloths.  I could have rented the tablecloths, but it was actually cheaper to buy them.  My only suggestion if you are going to buy fabric tablecloths is to start ironing them way in advance.  I started two days before and ironed 4 tablecloths before I decided there just wasn't enough time to iron them all.  I also tried steaming them, but it wasn't any quicker.  I even tried throwing them in the dryer with a wet towel and it didn't make a big difference.  You can take them to a dry cleaner, but that is another $12 per tablecloth.

For the table centerpieces, I already had the 2 tier metal stands that I use for other parties I have thrown.  I topped them with merit badge books for merit badges that my son had earned.  He was able to earn a total of 66 by his Eagle Scout Court of Honor.  Most troops have a merit badge library that you can borrow these books from if you want to use them to decorate for your event.  The bottom layer of the stand were all things from around my house that went with the merit badge theme or were things that my son used to earn the merit badge.  Below are a few pictures of some of the 10 centerpieces I created.  Each side of the stand were different merit badges that coordinated.  For example, one stand was orienteering and geocaching.  Another was music and chess.  I also had Eagle Scout napkins at each place, but we took the pictures before we had them on the table.  

I purchased two sets of balloon arches online for $13 each, and 5 eagle balloons for $10 to create a large balloon arch for a photo backdrop. My sister Ann and good friend Raegan spent the day before the event putting it together for me.  I spent $36 to make the balloon arch and I would have had to pay over $100 for a company to come in and make it. 

I had to include a picture of my eagle with some of the scout leaders

from his troop posing for a picture in front of the balloon arch.

In addition to the favor table, guestbook table, food buffet, tables for guests and photo backdrop, I had two 12' long tables for all of my son's scout memorabilia.  One was for things he worked on as a Cub Scout, and the second for his work as a Boy Scout. 

Cub Scout Table

Boy Scout Table

Finally, for the reception, I created a guest book table.  The guest book was an 8x8" photo book from Shutterfly that was free if you pay shipping.  If you follow them on Facebook or sign up for emails, every 3-6 months they will have free 8x8" books.  For $10 I was able to get a wonderful photo album guestbook with Eagle Scout pictures of my son that my sister took.  I also had an 18x24" photo of the before and after pictures of his Eagle Scout project and an 8x10" and 5x7" Eagle pictures of my son on the table.  My son's great grandfather was also an Eagle Scout, so I had his merit badge sash, blue cards, eagle pin and some other scout items of his along with a picture of my son and his portrait.  

I also had a congratulatory letter book on this table that my son was showing off when these pictures were taken.  I was able to mail out letters with an enclosed self-addressed envelope asking for congratulatory letters a month before the event. I would suggest starting mailing out these letters at least six weeks or more before the event. My son received letters from Donald Trump, Texas Governor, Greg Abbott, Doug Bowser, the Nintendo of America President, and many more.  He also received a flag that flew over the state of Texas from Senator Cruz and another that flew over the US capital from U.S. Representative Nathaniel Moran.  There are also a lot of letters that you can download online from NASA, the Blue Angels, Lions Club, and many more.  Here is a link for addresses and websites: Eagle, Summit, and Quartermaster Congratulation Letters (usscouts.org)  Start working on mailing out these letters as soon as your scout earns his Eagle Scout rank and you have a date set for his Court of Honor.  There is a sample letter request and information in Mark Ray's book that will help with this project.  

The sanctuary for the Court of Honor was a lot less work as it didn't require a lot of decorations.  I used bunting on the lecterns, flowers that the church already had, flags for the ceremony, signs for the different ranks my son had earned along the pews to go with the script, and a small vignette at the back of the sanctuary on a table with a golden eagle and a picture of my son.

The bulk of my budget spent on the Court of Honor ceremony went into printing the program.  I found several programs that I liked online and combined them to make one for my son.  I don't recommend printing multiple pages in color if you are on a tight budget.  This was one of the higher line items in my budget.  There are some really nice programs that are one page and can be printed at home.  This was my favorite item that I created and one that I am most proud of from the different things I made for my son's Eagle Scout Court of Honor.  I will cherish my copy and I hope my son will look at it later in life and be able to see all of the work that he did to earn the Eagle Scout rank. 

If you are looking for party printables, I have two other collections of printables that I have made for other Eagle Scout Courts of Honor.  You can contact me at jtanddolly@yahoo.com for pricing and details.  Examples of one of the collections at another event can be found at this blogspot: 

The Carver Crew: An Eagle Scout Court of Honor