Planning a birthday party for your kid can be fun as well as stressful. As a parent, you have to juggle so many things together. You need to have a plan in place to handle such an event. Here are some basics that you can add to your checklist.
Choose a Theme
Choosing a theme for the party is really important. It has to be in accordance with what your child likes. Make the theme unique and interesting. You can choose your kid’s favorite movie and ask the guests to dress up. It’ll create fun opportunities for your guests to get creative. The party can either be a surprise or your child can be involved during the planning of his party. Make sure to keep in mind that the food and drinks also have to align with the overall theme.
Find a Venue
Choosing a party location is extremely important. You can have it almost anywhere. The location could be the living room of your house, the backyard, or you can book a place outside. While selecting the venue, make sure it fits the theme of the party. Another thing to keep in mind is to choose a place where you can fit all your guests. You could decide to hold the party in your home but it could turn out to be too small to fit all the guests.
Hosting the celebrations at home can keep the family members on their feet and they can miss out on enjoying the party. Since you’re the one organizing it, it could get you so busy that you may not get any time with your kid on his/her birthday. Whereas, if you decide to hire party planners, it will reduce your hassle to deal with all the party arrangement stress.
Prepare a Guest List
Finalizing a guest list can be extremely overwhelming. You need to start early with preparing the lists. Keep a list on your phone and keep adding people to it. Make different lists like family members, close friends, and other people you want to invite. Narrowing down the guests is also another task, depending on how big you want the party to be. The best way to do it is to invite the guests according to your budget.
Make sure to send the invitations early and ask them to RSVP. If there’s room then you can add some more guests. You can indulge in fun activities with your child by designing and making invitations by hand. Make sure to design the invitations such that they suit the theme of the party. There are a lot of creative invitations options available in stores also.
Food and Cake
It is the most crucial thing at a birthday party. The food tends to create a lasting impression on the people. Even if it is managed by the party organizers, you still need to supervise the food and beverages. Carefully curate the menu for the party. Offer snacks that children love. At a birthday party, cutting the cake is the main event, so it needs to be the highlight. Keep a separate budget for your cake. For getting such a cake, you can approach a Specialty Bakeshop that provides customized cakes as per your requirements. It is always better to place your orders in advance as it will help prevent any delays and everything will be ready on time.
Entertainment
The party needs to be entertaining. Children tend to get bored after a while so you got to have games or other forms of entertainment planned for them. Some kids love to have clowns or magicians perform on their birthdays. For arranging that, you need to hire these performers beforehand and also add them to your budget. Parents need to pick out some fun games for the children. Here are some things to keep in mind while picking out games for the party.
Keep the age of the kids in your mind. If the children are younger and you picked out a complex game, they might just not understand it. So you need to choose games that are age-appropriate. Also, ready your materials for the activities before time. It will take immense effort to conduct these activities so make sure there is someone who can supervise the games making sure no kids get hurt.
Party Decor
If your venue is rented or you hired the party organizers, then they will handle your party decorations. However, you need to preside over it. If you’re organizing the party at the house, then you need to start from scratch. You must get your decor in place before the event starts. If the party is in the evening, keep your morning and afternoon free just for decorating.
Make a checklist, get your basic decorations like balloons, streamers, confetti, ribbons, etc in place. If you’re having a party theme, then you need to start looking for decorations matching your theme. Most of the decorations will have to be made on order so add this to your budget and place the orders.
Create Checklists
Checklists will be your best friend while organizing the party. You can keep multiple to-do lists for different activities. Keep checking them off as soon as your task gets fulfilled. Although keeping too many lists can be difficult, you can narrow it down to maintaining at least three to five of them for the most important things of the party.
Have a checklist for the guests, for your decorations, food items and you can keep updating it. It’s important to prepare one for your budget as well. Juggling with so many things at the same time can result in the parents going over budget. So it’s always better to start by sorting out the finances first and then going ahead with the planning.
Arranging a birthday party can be hard but these steps will help you get started. Make sure to include your child’s suggestions and feedback as it will be the most helpful thing while organizing the party.
