You are hosting a "get together" of 30+ people

Red beans and rice
Hogs Head Cheese
Hurricanes

Apps would be a tray of marinated crab claws, and mushroom caps stuffed with a little shrimp stuffing. I'd have a shrimp remoulade salad, and entrée could be a choice of either or both Grillades and grits or a kicked up Louisiana style shrimp, Andouille and grits. Alternative would be a slow smoked pork loin served as a poboy...self serve stations for these. Dessert is bread pudding.

Boudin - Appetizer
Gumbo - Soup
Turtle Sauce Piquant - Entree
Corn Maque Choux - Side
Bread Pudding - Dessert

It would have to be things that could be prepared in advance.

Appetizers - Boudin balls and/or BBQ shrimp (peeled instead of with shells to reduce mess)
Entrees - Gumbo and/or jambalaya
Dessert - Bread pudding and/or pralines

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CE Tiger

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I'm not sure the hard-shell crawfish that are out there right now would be the best thing for large gathering this time of year.

I could be in the Sahara and still eat a good gumbo.

I don't think it really matters. Pretty much anything worth a shite is going to be served at least warm. You'd be fine with either.

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'm pretty set on maque choux and bread pudding so far.

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how about jambalaya for the entree?

You might want to try the shrimp and andouille mini muffins in the recipe book as an app or snack with cocktails. I think they need a sauce and I use Cousin's Creole Tomato Dressing for them, but a white or red remoulade works great.

A mini crawfish pie would work at a sit down app. I make a filling that freezes well and prebake the little pie shells a bit, fill them, freeze and wrap tightly. I cook them in the oven straight from the freezer.

Another option is to make the filling, warm it and load into those little phyllo dough shells to put out with drinks.

All of the above can be made ahead in some form or another.

You could also do a cold shrimp, crawfish and/or crabmeat cocktail for a sit down or make a cold plate. Look in the recipe book for a recipe for crabmeat layered dip. It can be made with jumbo lump or boiled shrimp. It's cold and it goes a long way. It could be put out during the cocktail time.

(I'm assuming you're going to be serving alcheehol at this shindig.)

For entrees, there's always the old standby of jambalaya for a crowd. I'm tired of it and it's not my favorite thing, but it's definitely good for this sort of dinner.

Crawfish etouffee

Gumbo-I know it's hot, but I have AC and unless you're feeding these folks outside or your AC doesn't work well, it's fine to serve it, in my opinion. It's also one of those things that out of staters hear about and want to try, usually. More so than jambalaya. And, unless you're planning to do a big old seafood salad of some sort, you're going to be serving hot food one way or another. It's not about the temp when you're trying to serve people "a taste of Louisiana", in my humble opinion.

You could serve just a cup of it if you like and it's make ahead, so that works.

In fact, you could serve jambalaya, crawfish pie, file' gumbo like the song. I've done a menu like that several times for out of staters.

Shrimp creole is another dish that can be prepared early sans the shrimp which you could add last minute. Tastes better the next day or so anyway. I've done it and frozen the sauce, defrosted, heated, added a few last minute things and the shrimp. Done. It came in handy since I was using both ovens for other things.

BBQ shrimp would be fun.

You could go with grillades and grits, though I think of that as more of a brunch dish. I'll eat it any time, though.

I think bread pudding is the obvious dessert.

By the way, I started typing this as soon as your post went up, but got interrupted a bazillion times. I've probably repeated a bunch of stuff other people have posted by now, but WTH!