You’ve probably seen the news story doing the rounds today about the £16 invoice sent to the parents of a boy who was a ‘no show’ at a friend’s party at a dry ski slope.

I’m sure like many others, I thought that this was totally outrageous. However, from firsthand experience, I know how stressful it can be (or how stressful I make) organising a child’s birthday party, and how costs can start to spiral even when planning something rather more modest than a party on a ski slope.

Did she just flip out and send the invoice in a moment of post-party madness?

Elsa keeps the children entertained. That helps!!

Here are my top five party organisation headaches (I think they call these First World problems):

1) Too many guests turn up on the day

You’ve carefully calculated, done the correct number of party bags, the right amount of food and the right number of layers on the pass the parcel; then you get a couple of extra on the day. I always do plenty of food and extra party bags just in case. However, if you’ve hired an entertainer or the party is at a particular venue you may have to pay for a certain number of children/places.

For a Frozen-themed party we booked ‘Elsa’ from My Little Princess Parties (they’re great by the way). We provided the cake, party food and party bags, but all the entertainment was laid on by Elsa at a cost of £199 for two hours. This covered up to 25 children. More than 25 kids and there was a charge of £5 per extra child. Over 30 and an extra entertainer would have been required. Thankfully we had exactly 30. Phew!

2) Too few guests/lots of cancellations

What if you play it safe with numbers and then get loads of last minute cancellations? For one party, I got four cancellations on the day and one no-show. I was hugely disappointed on my daughter’s behalf and was pretty stressed as I didn’t want the party to be a complete flop. I didn’t tell her about the cancellations. It was the right thing to do. She had a brilliant time anyway (there were still plenty of partygoers despite my worries), and it was only afterwards that my daughter started dissecting the guest list and realised that not everyone had made it. She was fine.

From a cost point of view, if you’re doing an activity-based/venue party, you’ll probably get charged for the number you specified. Just suck it up. You were expecting to pay that anyway.

3) Party duration 

One of my biggest mistakes was having a fourth birthday party at home, which was three hours long. It was just way too much for 38 (yes, 38) young children. For a select number of friends, who are a bit older; fine, but for younger ones, it’s mayhem. Two hours is plenty.

4) How much to spend on party bags 

Do you go with a massive bag of tat and tonnes of sugary treats (which incidentally the kids love and the parents hate) or go for fewer, more quality items? Oh the  dilemma. A mixture I reckon. Kids are hugely disappointed if the bag’s really sparse, even if there is something in there that’s really nice. Parents are hugely disappointed if there’s a tonne of plastic mini toys in there that will be broken within minutes and then litter their house. If mine are anything to go by, they get extremely attached to tat and it’s almost impossible to throw these items away.

5) Will I look like a complete weirdo if I send out save the date emails before the actual invitations?

I didn’t send these out for my own wedding yet for two consecutive years I have sent ‘save the dates’ for my eldest’s parties. In my defence, you have to book December parties well in advance and people do get very busy at that time of year.

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My husband Matt flew back from Chicago on Saturday. After a week of dealing with the threesome on my own, I was very happy to see him. However, our reunion was short-lived.

Sofia had a fifth birthday party to go to in South West London that day. Matt was jet-lagged and the twins went down for a nap, so it was a case of divide and conquer with just Sofia and I making the 30-minute journey.

On Sunday, Sofia had a new school friend over for a playdate to make up for the fact that we can’t make her birthday party as we’ve already RSVP’d to another two 5th birthday parties on  the same day.

I didn’t go to NCT classes as we had private antenatal classes at home (this didn’t cost any more than NCT). They were great, but I didn’t gain the big network of NCT mums to hang around with after my daughter was born. However, I quickly started attending new mum and baby classes and soon had a great group of mum friends. They all knew each other from NCT and I was the cuckoo, although one that was made to feel very welcome. It meant that Sofia had a wide circle of friends from the word go and almost five years later those early friendships are still going strong. The problem is all their birthdays fall within weeks of each other.

I’m all for the children having an active social life and I love to see how much fun my four-year-old has at parties. However, we have nine childrens’ parties to go to between now and Christmas. It’s pretty exhausting, not to mention expensive, and as siblings (understandably) aren’t invited to most of these bashes, it looks like Matt and I will be spending many more chunks of many more weekends apart.

I think Matt and I need to plan a much-needed date night very soon; perhaps if only to galvanise ourselves before Sofia’s own party in early December! At least we’ll all be at that one though.

The post When Your Four-Year-Old’s Social Life Takes Over appeared first on The Parent Social.

The pirate birthday girls before the guests arrived.

Rule one of planning children’s birthday parties: get invites out early!

Sofia’s friends have birthdays around the same time of year, so the first rule was: get in early. One of the mums sent out the invitations for her child’s party over two months ahead of time! This clashed with when we were planning Sofia’s so I had to change date. My husband thought I was mad for doing this but I didn’t want her to be disappointed that most of her friends couldn’t make it.

The new date was when another friend turned four so we decided to do a joint party. That should have reduced the stress but didn’t.

Rule two of planning children’s birthday parties: choose the venue early

We immediately started calling up halls, soft play centres, children’s farms and hirers of bouncy castles/play equipment. Everywhere was booked up or we couldn’t get a venue and equipment hired on the same day. Some places were just extortionately expensive. This was 11 weeks ahead of the party date.

Booking a catered for party at a farm, soft play centre or similar does take so much of the stress out of it. The venue is suitable and you don’t have to worry about the food, entertainment and clearing up. However, do check out the small print as costs can suddenly mount up. Do you have to pay extra for siblings and parents? One venue allowed one adult free per eight children. With a guest list of 30+, that was quite a lot of adults to pay for. Is a cake and candles included in the price or do you need to provide your own? Similarly, do they decorate the room?

Party at home

As time started to run out we decided to host the party at our house. For this fourth birthday party, all parents stayed. By five, many parents drop and run. You need to establish who’s staying and who isn’t as you may have sole responsibility for more children than you had bargained for and need to bring in reinforcements.

The theme

A theme seems to be de rigueur at the moment and it does actually help with the organisation. We settled on Pirates and Princesses as that hopefully catered for everyone (both the party girls went with the pirate theme by the way).

Invitations and guest list

Once the theme, venue and time are confirmed, get the invites out ASAP. I had to sit down with Sofia for quite a while to confirm the guest list. I wanted to ensure she had remembered everyone she really wanted there and hadn’t included those that she’d once said hello to at nursery. We opted for a start time of 2pm. This gave us plenty of time in the morning to prepare stuff and also meant that the children had already had lunch at home and didn’t arrive immediately wanting to sit down for food.

The other stuff when planning children’s birthday parties

After the invites are out try and do as much in advance as possible. I immediately booked a face painter, which worked well as it gave something for the early arrivers to get on with while waiting for the rest of the guests. I found Party Delights was great for getting our pirate and princess plates, table clothes, loot bags etc. We also bought two piñatas from there. A word of warning on these though, you often have to buy the stick and the actual toys for inside separately.

The pound shop was great for getting loot bag fillers, pass the parcel gifts and games prizes. The local toyshop had lots of pick and mix pocket money toys, which were also ideal. Pass the parcels were made up days in advance – do not underestimate how long these take to do! – as were the loot bags.

Personalised Fairy Castle Cake from Marks and Spencer (£45 for 48 portions).

If you are having a cake custom made, sort this out sooner rather than later and collect the day before so you’re not running around on the day itself.

The food worked well. We taped plastic tablecloths onto the floor and had a picnic with all the food we had prepared in the morning. This meant that the children could sit where they liked. We went for both healthy options and party treats. We opted for cartons of drink instead of cups so they could grab their own and we didn’t have to spend ages pouring stuff out. It also minimised spillages.

Party food time!

What I learnt

The best advice is to keep it simple; something I didn’t really do and wish I had. As a friend remarked, the more games you try and plan the more stressful it is trying to rally tons of kids. My husband – getting carried away – ordered glow in the dark badges (which I had to write every child’s name onto) and glow sticks and bracelets. They looked good, but I spent a ridiculous amount of time breaking the sticks and badges to make them work instead of focusing on the party itself. We had a disco room, and I think the children would have been more than happy to have their face painted and have a boogie followed by the party tea. Instead, I was continually trying to organise them to sit in a circle or do this game or that game.

My experience taught me that to make everything as stress free as possible, plan well ahead, especially if you want a particular venue. Prepare as much as possible in advance and try not to be too ambitious.

At the end of the day, they are just happy to be with their friends playing and dancing. What’s stressful about that…?

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