What a strange world we are living in. Who would have thought we would have restrictions to the number of people that can be in your house for a celebration? Over that last 10 months we all have been spending time with family; enjoying the quiet life and really appreciating the small things, that perhaps we may have taken for granted before. Most of you know our story about our son who was born 3 months early…..In Florida,,,,,,, in middle of a pandemic. He fought so hard to live that we celebrate all of his milestones, in a big way. His first birthday is no exception! I have been thinking about this day for literally months! It’s a day we weren’t sure we would see somedays throughout our NICU journey, which means even more reason to celebrate!
Over the last few months I have had the Herald and The Telegram reach out asking me for tips on how to throw a perfect Holiday party in a pandemic. It got me thinking that it might be helpful to do a blog on having the Perfect Birthday Party…… Pandemic style. While this blog will be about John-Derrick’s 1st birthday planning, it really can be used for any age or any event! Pandemic or not, there are fabulous life events that need to be celebrated 🙂
Because this is pretty detailed I decided to break it down in to a number of different blogs.
Pandemic Party Planning:
There are a few key factors/elements of a successful party that do not change whether you have 2 people or 200!! These elements bring your party from drab to fab!
First of all is deciding your theme!! Regardless of the guest count, every good party needs a theme as a starting point. A theme gives you direction and vision when starting your concept. Theme doesn’t have to be specific, it could be as simple as a colour or as elaborate as “Jungle” theme. For John-Derrick’s birthday we chose, “Welcome to the Jungle”. We chose this theme because it was important to us! As a little back story, the only item we had purchased for John-Derrick before he was born was a 9 foot giraffe. Then when he was born, his isolet was called giraffe, his name tag had a giraffe, the blanket to go over isolet was giraffes and the picture on his 3rd room was…. You guessed it, a Giraffe. It very quickly became our animal of choice, and a no brainer for his theme.
Your party theme will be represented with your invitation, décor, food and even your outfit. Every element is equally important to have a successful event!
Invitations: This is the very first thing your guests see about your event. Without reading the words on the invite, your guests should know what the theme is, level of formal/informal, and what to wear just by looking at your invite! You need to make sure your invite reflects how YOU want your event to be. If you want a formal black tie event, you would do a simple invite, with script font and formal language, you wouldn’t do a nautical blue and white invite with block font LOL. For John-Derrick’s invite we choose a sweet design from Minted that had animals, banners, block font and a cut out. At a quick glance of the invite, you know it’s a kids birthday, jungle theme and whimsical! We will feature pictures of our party elements after our event
