Sunday 26 June 2011

Birthday Party Planning - theme

This is the sixth part of the series on Birthday Party Planning which started with the introduction. This post discusses party themes.


I'm all up for theming a birthday party, it's so much easier to make the majority of choices if you're constrained by a theme. Yes I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but it's always worked for me.

If you've followed this series from the beginning you'll already know the themes of each of Rachel's birthday parties and then upcoming 6th:
1st Birthday - Teddy Bears Picnic
2nd Birthday - Fifi party
3rd Birthday - Painting party
4th Birthday - Tinkerbell disco party
5th Birthday - Pottery painting and crafty party
6th Birthday - High School Musical 3 party

I chose the first two, focussing on things in Rachel's life which she loved. She then selected each of the following party themes, that's where she always starts in April when she's thinking about what party she'd like. She comes up with a theme, this year High School Musical 3; we discuss how this might work as a party and what she'd like to do and from there it all takes off.

So this year we started off by re-watching, for the dozenth of so time, High School Musical 3. Rachel's first suggestion was that we could play the film at the party and start and stop it to have games. We ruled this out for it's technological complexity. I looked at whether anyone can be hired to run a HSM3 party but the only options were a straight disco or a cheerleading party, neither of which was quite meeting Rachel's exacting standards. Eventually we came to the actual plan which we will be hopefully achieving in 3 weeks time; to play the HSM3 music and have games associated with each one.

Where else does the theme take us? It forms the basis for:
- invitations
- food
- birthday cake
- party bags

Themes work for us, they are a focus and ensure that I don't get carried away. It is even easier now Rachel chooses the theme, that's one less concern off my shoulders.

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