First Birthday Party Preparations

First birthday is a special occasion when the baby reaches an important milestone in her growth. Both mom and baby had stumbled upon many a time and successfully made this mark which is worth celebrating. As a new parent I wanted to make this occasion special and memorable. I had been around the internet for a long time browsing about birthday preparations, decorations, invitations, etc. It was then, when I learned what party organizing was and how it could stress one out easily.  For me, I wanted to keep the party in a way that my baby’s nap time, dinner time or bed time did not get affected.  And if you are going through the same stress as I did you can read my story below and get some ideas.

Three rules of my party were...

I had decided upon three major criteria for our little doll’s first birthday party,

First - I wanted to keep the celebrations simple so we decided to celebrate at our house, (my baby is more comfortable at home than in a new place where she had never been before),

Second – I had invited only few close relatives and friends (about 30) so that my baby didn’t get uncomfortable looking at new faces, though I wished I could invite everyone I knew to celebrate the occasion.

Third – the party was very brief with not too many events – we had cake cutting, some dance by kids and then dinner and the whole event was winded up within two and half hours. The guests arrived at 7.00 PM and left by 9.30 PM.

Decorating the house

There are lots of DIY tutorials available on the internet that you can make use of for decorating the house or simply buy the party supplies from the store. I had bought a few and others I made at home.

I had decorated the house with many balloons (mainly blue, as the party’s theme was blue) and colorful paper streamers.  A backdrop was also created for the photo sessions with paper streamers and some store bought decorative items. The number ‘1’ I had made out of old carton box and decorated it with paper flowers. I made a collage by printing my baby’s pictures and displayed in one of walls. A table was decorated with colourful sheets for the cake cutting and displaying the goodies.

Dinner

As soon as the guests arrived we welcomed them with some lemon juice and snacks - chips and biscuits.  For the dinner we served both vegetarian and non vegetarian.  Our menu included Chicken Biriyani, Naan (butter and garlic), Paneer butter masala, Mushroom Manchurian, Veg pulao, Channa masala, Curd rice, Pickle and Fryums.  For the dessert we served Gulab jamuns and ice cream.

Return gifts

Deciding on return gifts could be very confusing task but since all kids to my party were below 10 years of age I had decided to give them a pouch with a few fancy stationery like  pen, pencil, eraser, scale, sharpener and wax colours.  For the adults we presented small mementos made out of glass.  Since my guest list was small I could present one to each family.  The gifts were kept inside a fancy paper bag made out chart paper.

If you are planning for a big party and wish to invite too many friends and relatives then I would suggest taking the help of event planners.  They will save you a lot of time which you can invest elsewhere and be all ready for the big day.  The above post is only for those who love organizing themselves and want to keep things simple.

Did you like my post? Did it help you anyway? Kindly share your thoughts below, I would love to hear from you.