Babies: 9 - 12 Months
Aprilmomx2
member
Average cost of 1st Birthday?
Aprilmomx2
member
What are you planning on spending (or have you spent) on a 1st birthday? Food, decorations, cake, drinks, etc. Total cost and breakdown if you don't mind sharing!
I was planning on doing something really cheap as it's just family and DS doesn't have any little friends just yet. But I keep finding cute ideas and foods and now I am looking at around $250. Is that excessive??
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Re: Average cost of 1st Birthday?
I'm sorry I can't help since I'm in the same boat as you are. I haven't even started looking at supplies since I was worried about the cost too. And we wanted to keep it simple, but we just have too many family & friends that live within 10 minutes of us. $250 seems like a lot for a party, but were you planning to make your own food, or buy everything?
I set a budget of $300 and came in under it.
ETA:
We had 25 adults and 5 kids.
Here is my breakdown:
Decorations - $45 (I made birthday banners, tissue paper poms and bought some Dr. Seuss cutouts on amazon. Cheap, but super cute...and I plan to resell them, lol.) My invites were free with Pampers GTG points.
Favors: $25 (Dr. Seuss books for all the kids)
Food/Drinks - $175 (We made everything except for a tray of nuggets from Chicfila, including his cake.)
Outfit - $4 (He wore a Dr. Seuss shirt that was on clearance at Target.)
(Gift wise - my mom bought him the Dr. Seuss hat (in siggy) and bib. A friend bought him another 1st birthday shirt that he wore after cake, so I didn't have to buy any of that.)
Happy Birthday, little man. We love you so much!
My favorite money saving tip: I've earned more than $300 in gift cards (Amazon, Starbucks, Southwest!) using SwagBucks for internet searching - and you can too! It's FREE and EASY!
DS's party was last weekend. We had it at our house but had a local restaurant do all the food. We also provided beer and wine. It was 20 adults and 5 children. I spent $700 - here is an approximate breakdown:
Cake & Cupcakes: $150 (I had a very elaborate custom designed fondant cake)
Food & Drink (had it catered with pastas, pizzas, salads): $300
Decorations: $150
Favors: $25
Birthday T-shirt for DS: $25
Misc (cups, plates, napkins, invitations): $50
ITA: Excessive is relative. If you can afford it and it's important to you, it's not excessive. If you have to put it on a credit card you can't immediately pay off or are not going to be able to pay bills because you spent money on a party, than it's excessive, IMO.
I haven't fully decided on the food but am thinking about doing a sandwich bar...different meats, condiments, breads with some finger foods as sides (meatballs, chips, etc).
I'm planning on spending no more than $300.
So far I have a banner (free since I made it from my own supplies that I already had), wall decor ($13) and invitations ($30). Food will probably run us another $150 or so (we're doing all the cooking including the cake), and then I need to get some balloons, streamers, and an outfit for Liam so I'm thinking that will be another $50 or so (unless I can get my best friend's mom to embroider something for me on her fancy embroidery machine. Then the outfit might be cheaper than I am thinking). I'm probably going to come in right at $300.
This also does not include his birthday gift.
We are spending about $150-200 on decorations, cake, ice cream, food, and drinks. I will hit up costco for all of that, and hopefully use some coupons. We are having a small party though with no more than 15 people.
I think $250 is reasonable, and not to excessive.
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For DD's birthday we had 60 adults and 15 kids/babies, and we spent about $1,000! Our families are too big to fit in our house, so we rented a hall. Since we had to rent a hall, we figured we might as well invite friends too. DD goes to daycare so we invited babies from there and their families, and other babies and families we met from our childbirth classes, prenatal yoga, etc. It snowballed and added up pretty quick. Our breakdown was:
Food -- $500 (hot roast beef and meatball sandwiches, hoagie platters, potato salad, macaroni salad from the local deli)
Cake -- $75 (great cake!!! -- everyone loved it, and very cute)
Hall rental -- $225
Decorations -- $100
Invitations -- $75
Plus DD's dress, veggie platters, chips and dip, paper plates, plastic forks and knives, etc.
It was a great day and we all had a blast. DD was so excited to see all her friends -- it was the greatest play date ever for her
Did it blow our budget? Yeah. But that's OK with us.
I've done this for all of his parties! And easter egg hunt 'parties' as well. It never fails to be a hit. Everyone pretty much loves sandwiches...
There will only be about 20 adults at our party. That is why I am trying to figure out if I am out of my mind. I originally wasn't going to do much as it's just family and I don't need gift bags, etc for kids. But I got online and love all the fun party stuff and feel like maybe I should decorate and make it fun and festive.
considering you had to rent a hall and the type of food you had etc. I don't think it's too bad. We had to rent a place for DS's first as well and it was the same price, but we got 100 of it back... And I have the same issue as you as far as so much family. We now use the church gym across the street from my house, but I don't regret using that venue the first time.. (the price jumped 100 bucks now and we can't even tape up decor so I'll never do there again)
Good to know! I have never done a sandwich bar before but it sounded easy and different than what we normally do. Thanks!
We are going ALL OUT and getting a suite at a baseball game, anticipating 50+. The cost is going to be high, to say the least (we are providing food and tix). Luckily there is only so much decorating you can do at a baseball stadium, and all paper products and utensils will be provided.
We'll probably end up somewhere around $400-$500. I think it is also relative to where you live. We are having 35 people (family only) and having it catered (sandwiches, pasta salads, fruits, beverages).
Food & Drink Cost: $300
Decorations: $50
Picnic Grove Fee: $25
Cakes & Desserts: $100
For DD1s party I think I spent in the neighborhood of $600-$800, we had 85 people.
For DD2s party I think I'll spend around $500-$700, and we will probably have closer to 65-70 people.
For 60 people
Hall Rental (Free because of family membership)
Table Cloths, Plates, Napkins, Utensils, Cups: $50
Balloons: $35
Tank: $50
Anchors: $20
Materials for Photo Board: $50 (In place of banner)
Pictures for Photo memory book/Photoboard (Free)
Activities: $50
Costume: $48
Favors: $30
Food: Budget is $150-200
Cake/Cupcakes: $100
So about $600
For us, it was not expensive at all. We had (including us) 5 adults and 3 kids for supper and then another 2 adults and 3 kids for cake. Cost:
Food - maybe $25 (we just had appie type finger foods)
Cake - $1 for candle, I made the actual cake from scratch and had all the ingrediants already
Decorations - $0 - my in-laws bought balloons and those were the only thing we had
Gift - $56 for puzzles and books
Misc - $0??? I honestly can't think of anything else we did. We didn't do invitations, a special outfit or any kind of theme, so we had nothing to spend on there. So you can do a small bash for little dollars. We have lots of family and friends in our area, but my parents were in Texas and because it was around Valentines Day there were other events that the rest of my family was doing as well. Even if they had been able to come though, we were only inviting extra people for cake afterwards. My husbands family was the extra at supper because they came 7 hours for her birthday and were staying with us, so we kind of had to feed them! We didn't invite any of our friends because once you invite one, you feel more obligated to invite others and so we just didn't invite any.
Daughter #1 - February 12, 2010
natural m/c March 11, 2011 at 8 1/2 weeks
Daughter #2 - January 11, 2012
Ectopic pregnancy discovered November 6, 2012 at 6 weeks
Daughter #3 - January 19, 2014
Started our exploration into the world of international adoption June 2012. We have no idea what this is going to look like but we are excited to find out!
We will have maybe 25 people. It is a joint party between my baby and my BFF's baby. We paid $57 for decor, 16 plates, 16 little plates, 16 cups, forks, spoons, balloons, 16 invites, and 16 hats (from firstwishes.com). We split the cost. Once we get an idea of how many people are coming, we will go to Walmart for more cups and forks. It is a pool party. There will be no party favors (all the kids are 2 and under). I am going to make mini cupcakes for the kids and regular ones for the adults. It's at 2 in the afternoon, so we are not doing lunch or dinner.
So,
$25 for my share of original decor, plates, etc
$1.50 x4 boxes of mix for cupcakes
$1.50 x4 containers of icing
$10.00 maybe for extra plates, cups, anything last minute nick nacks
Grand total= $46.00. This does not include the $50 I spent on her gifts (clothes, books, and a Leap Frog dog names Violet).
ETA: I forgot the $75 for the smash cake photo session. So, $121.00.