Viral ‘Queen of Halloween’ Spends $30K on Her Annual Halloween Party, ‘Almost Half’ of Her Budget for Last Year's Event (Exclusive)

Macy Blackwell has two priorities in October: creating Halloween content for her millions of followers and throwing a Halloween party for her friends and family. While her two responsibilities overlap conceptually — and both thrive on Blackwell's flair for festive decor — she considers them to be very separate projects.

Online fans have dubbed Blackwell the "queen of Halloween" thanks to her viral creative streak, but when it comes to her social media content, the Texas creator is all about DIY and budget-friendly crafts. Over the past five years, she's personally invested plenty of her own time and money into her home makeovers, like dreaming up her iconic, annual Halloween-themed front porch designs.

But Blackwell doesn't seek to alienate her audience — which includes 2.2 million Instagram followers — with inaccessible, overly expensive decorations.

"I definitely try to still do things that are attainable for everyone because that's totally where I started," she tells PEOPLE. "It's always fun to see the over-the-top porch. That's more of an entertaining thing, but I make sure to do a lot that is for the masses."

The Halloween party, however, is a completely different story. Last year, Blackwell and her husband hosted their friends and family for an all-out bash that was too good not to repeat.

"We were actually pressured into doing it again this year since everyone had so much fun last year," Blackwell admits. She did make a point to create something "completely different" from last year's gathering, so she opted to plan it out around a theme: "We did a very old-school, spooky Vegas vibe," she tells PEOPLE.

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Blackwell approaches the party with a mindset that leans less into DIY, crafts and hacks, and she allocates a fittingly higher budget than she does for her social media content. For one thing, she hired a party planner to help bring her vision to life and assist with logistics, like calling and communicating with vendors.

The Vegas-inspired theme was carried by a number of moody, elaborate decorations. A team came to hang red drapes throughout their home, and they brought in actual casino tables as well. Guests were able to play games like poker, roulette and craps.

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"Gambling is actually illegal in Texas, so we do this system with funny money and then you turn the funny money in for raffle tickets and win prizes," says the holiday savant.

Between the planning, setup, food, drinks and all else that added to the atmosphere, Blackwell tells PEOPLE that the costs came out to about $30,000, "which was actually almost half of what we spent last year," the hostess adds. "And I guarantee you nobody noticed either."

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She says she and her husband were as creative as possible when it came to what and where they spent most. Since this was their second year throwing the big party, they had a better idea of which investments "would make the most impact."

"We got feedback from last year, and we thought, 'What were guests using? What were people not really doing? What do people love?'" Blackwell shares. "We really just tried to spend a little bit more mindfully on that to make the biggest impact while still being aware of budget."