How to plan & prepare for baby’s first birthday party!

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Congratulations! You have officially made it through 1 year of parenthood! Now, it’s time for the FUN — planning baby’s first birthday party!

Now, planning baby’s first birthday party isn’t always easy. These days, many parents tend to make this a HUGE event.

We’re talking hundreds of guests, giant tiered cakes, professional photographers and videographers. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m all about cherishing this memory. It only happens once!

However, I can’t get behind spending hundreds to thousands of dollars on a party our little guy wouldn’t even remember!

If you couldn’t tell, we chose to go the smaller route. We invited all our close immediate family & it was such a special time.

So, I’m going to share with YOU how you can plan a simple, affordable, and still memorable baby’s first birthday party!

Baby’s First Birthday Party Checklist

There are some main parts to every birthday party you need to have down. If you’re not much of a planner, don’t worry, I got you!

• Decide on the size of the party. I personally think too large of a crowd can be overwhelming for baby which takes away from them having fun but to each their own.
  
• Choose a theme! Does your little one have a favorite book? TV show? Stuffed animal?
  
• Decide if your baby will have a smash cake/cupcake. We ended up getting a small cake for our son, it made for some cute photos and he had a blast smashing the cake (and of course eating it too!).
  
• Serve food that your baby will love! I actually prep all my son’s food 1 week at a time. So we decided to go with pizza for everyone which paired nicely with his mixed veggies and cake 🙂
  
• Choose the right time & duration. Does your little one have a nap schedule? Try to pick a time they will be well-rested, awake and happy. Don’t change baby’s schedule for the party, adjust the party to their schedule!
  
• Pick a location. We actually opted to have our little dude’s first birthday at our home. I wanted to be home in the event he got fussy, didn’t feel good or was just overwhelmed by everything. It ended up being such a good decision and it’s free!
  
• Don’t forget to take photos! Lots of them!

Related Post >>> What I learned my first year as a MOM <<<

1st birthday decoration ideas for boy

Obviously, we have a little boy, but I actually didn’t look for “boy specific” birthday decorations.

Our theme was decided because he LOVES Harry & Larry, Pros who help from the Baby First TV network.

The rest of our decor was selected to match and go around that main theme. We had 1 wall dedicated to having cute banners and birthday signs (this is the same wall he sat in front of to eat his cake). I decorated his high chair and then, we had only 3 balloons I believe. I’m not even sure if they made it into any of our pictures, hah!

But I know some of you are here because you’re stuck trying to figure out some cute birthday ideas, so check out the list below for some inspiration:

• First Party Themes to Celebrate the Birthday Boy by Red Tri
  
• 43 Boy First Birthday Themes by My Little Moppet
  
• Creative first birthday ideas by PopSugar
  
• Wild One Birthday (rustic theme) by Kinsley Collection
  
• Wild One Birthday (jungle theme) by The Chirping Moms

And of course, you can check out the rest of this post for more photos from our special day to gather some ideas for your baby’s first birthday party theme!

Set the theme with matching family birthday shirts.

If you want to do something special without going too over the top, get some matching family birthday shirts!

I went on etsy and found a shop (Princess Fantasy Tutus) that could make custom shirts in our specific theme. Which, by the way, Harry & Larry were REALLY hard to find shirts or decorations for.

But as you can see in our photo above, having the matching shirts really helped to just tie in our party theme together! Not to mention, it was flat our adorable!

Selecting the best first birthday cake.

We actually got really lucky that one of my husband’s coworkers is a cake decorator in his free time, so he had offered to make the cakes for our son’s first birthday party.

Because we had such a small guest count, ~11 people total, we opted to get a medium decorated round cake and a small smash cake.

Prior to this, I was thinking about keeping it even more simple and just baking cupcakes and using a small cake mold to make my son a smash cake that way. I had found all the supplies on Amazon and was ready to order them!

Putting together our Baby First TV Birthday Party (Harry & Larry):

The invites:

I used an online site called EVITE to send out invitations via email. Since we had such a small guest list, it didn’t make sense to send out paper invites since most come in minimum packs of 20.

Not to mention, I just didn’t have time to hand-make each little invite.

The decorations:

Normally, I get all my party decorations from Party City, but since this was a very specific theme, I got all my decorations online at Amazon instead!

Then, I printed off various photos of Harry & Larry, cut and glued them to my happy birthday sign for a custom banner!

I also got a 12-month photo banner and attached his photo for every month. It was the cutest little banner, I actually didn’t take it down for almost 1 week LOL

For his highchair I got the decor from Amazon. I linked all the products seen in our photos below if you want to check them out!

Baby’s First Birthday Party

Putting it all together was the best part of everything!

Seeing our little guys face light up when he saw his favorite TV show characters on the wall and when he saw his family members is a memory I’ll never forget!

We kept things very simple since we had the party on a 2.5 hr time limit. We knew after we did cake and food he’s get sleepy and start getting closer to his nap time so we didn’t have any fancy games or anything like that planned.

Had we planned for games, these were some cool ideas I had found online:

• First Birthday Party Games by Mom Junction
  
• First Birthday Party Games and Activities by The Spruce
  
• Indoor Party First Birthday Ideas by Fatherly

The Birthday Cake

Below are the photos of our super cute Harry & Larry themed birthday cake!

How to choose baby’s first birthday gifts

Trying to select gifts for a one-year-old is tough. There’s SO much selection making it hard to narrow down the choices!

Honestly, we never even gave suggestions on gifts we wanted. Our family just brought their own gifts which ended up being a major hit!

Out of all the gifts he received (despite having 11 guests, he managed to get WAY more than 11 gifts lol) these are the ones he’s completely obsessed with on the daily:

Sit to Stand Alphabet Train

This train is fun because it has many uses! It can be used as a walker, a ride-on toy – all while being educational and teaching baby about the alphabet & various animals/colors!

His absolute favorite thing to do is take all the alphabet blocks and put them down the chute of the train, collect them all and do it again.

Radio Flyer Deluxe Tricycle

The Radio Flyer Tricycle is a MUST for anyone with an older baby/toddler! He loves going for walks around the neighborhood in this! It has an adjustable shade making is perfect for those warmer days.

It also has a little storage center for small items (like a small drink). And it grows with your little one! It’s pretty cool to know we will have many more years of using this before he’s outgrown it.

MegaBloks Big Building Bag

Once kids reach that one year mark, you’ll notice they begin to show a lot of interest in stacking items or destroying them. These MegaBloks are the perfect toy for that fascination!

They’re large enough I don’t have to worry about small pieces being ingested and they’re easy for him to connect on his own! These keep him busy throughout the day when I’m cooking or doing chores.

Related Post >>> What’s the BEST Sleep Sack for Babies & Toddlers? <<< (this one would make an AMAZING birthday gift!)

Overview of throwing the BEST Baby’s First Birthday Party!

If there’s anything you take out this post, I truly hope it’s that you just remember this is a special day for your baby.

It’s not about anyone else but them. Family members will be excited and may even try to talk you up about all the extravagant things you should do, but just know you don’t have to.

Focus on picking a good time around your little one’s sleep schedule, keep the food easy and affordable, choose a theme if you’d like, and HAVE A FUN DAY!

Feel free to brag about your baby’s first birthday in the comments <3

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