Birthday Party Fun – How to Entertain 45x 5-6 year olds on a Budget

I can hear you already, you are saying ‘Are you crazy, 45 children at a birthday party?’ I can confirm at times throughout the 2 hours party maybe we did think this. Maybe we did reach for the non-existent prosecco but instead drink copious cups of coffee 🙂

But seriously

So Josh, Bobby and Max all turned 6 within 17 days of each other. They are best friends so us mummies decided to do a joint party for them. Joint party means we can invite the whole year, all 60 children, and spend a bit more money as we were splitting the costs by 3. The organisation was also split by 3.

Location

So first job was to find the location, and as we decided to do this with only 4 weeks’ notice we didn’t have that much choice. Woolmer Green is the next village along from ours with a huge hall available on the Saturday in between the boy’s birthdays. Only available until 1:30..so we booked from 9:30 am to 1:30pm, with 11-1pm allocated to party. Venue Hire £100.

Invites

I designed and printed out the invites. I used a template from word. The printing was quite ink heavy a mistake. So I went through 2 cartridges so £15.

I collected the RSVP’s by text and email. Although 14 out of the 60 didn’t RSVP. This is a strange one, why do people not RSVP to a party? Do some people not understand that this should be done or maybe the invite didn’t make its way home? Or maybe the parents just plain forgot? Not sure but it’s a bit rude.

Entertainment

This was an easy one as my neighbour has a bouncy castle business.  So he did us a deal on a castle, loads of soft play equipment and a slide/bouncy castle combi thing. £120

I also did a craft table, turned out to be a great idea for the more creative ones, not so good for the mums stressing about the glitter all over the floor;-). I raided my craft box and bought a few extra bits from B&M – Total Spend £5

Food/Asda purchases

• Cake, lunch and buffet food came to £51 including 3 chocolate tray bake cakes.
• Sweeties for sweet cone party bags that we hand-made were £38
• Plates & Napkins & Platters & Cone bags were £19
• 3 Helium age 6 Balloons were £9 = Total Spend £117

Party Bags

For the party bags we spent £42 on sweets and bags which made 45 large sweetie cone bags. Not bad as small sweet cones are more expensive than this. No plastic throw away toys from us.

Us mums got together a few nights before the party and had a few glasses of wine and made the party bags together. This was fun and we did well getting through a few bottles of wine on a Tuesday night;-)

Pressies

We asked that people give the boys money so they could put the money towards something bigger of their choice. I made a big golden post box for the cards and cash. All money at the end of the party was counted up and split by 3.

The Day

Everything went to plan and lots of lovely friendly mummies stayed to help out. We needed much help with setting up tables and chairs, serving food, teas and coffee, refereeing the bouncy castles and soft play. And everyone pitched in.

It was manic, especially when the children arrived. There were tears, a few telling’s off, but mainly lots of fun, laughter and our boys had a fabulous party for their birthdays. Party bags went down a treat and we had just enough, despite a few of the non RSVP’ing people turning up!!

Would we do it again..maybe for Jack my youngest I would. I think 6 is about the max age for a big party where the whole class is invited. It was good though. And was a bargain party. Total cost £362. £121.66 each. So if you can and if you want to, do a joint party with your children’s friends. It’s much easier to manage and it’s much more fun to organise together.

What Would We do for Birthday Party Treat with a bigger Budget?

What would we do if we had a bigger budget? I asked the boys, they would love to have a zorbing party! Or whats about having fairground rides, teacup ride, or the toy ride, flying jumbos or the fun house. All are great ideas for future birthday parties that I will keep in the memory bank.