HELLO INTERNET FRIENDS!
I know my 21st birthday was wayyyyy over but I told myself while planning my own birthday party that I will come up with a post to help those who might need a little guiding to hosting their own party and so here I am – after several months of procrastination but I'm sure many of you are nice enough to understand.
Just a little bit of detail before I get started. My 21st birthday was last year and it was held at NSRCC.
I wanted to host 2 separate birthday parties initially (one for family/relatives and the other for friends) because I felt that it might be awkward for my friends if there are too many adults around but I ditched that idea in the end. Even so, it all went on well.
I only had one objective for my party which was for everyone to enjoy themselves and not have anyone feel excluded/awkward/be isolated in cliques.
I remember being so troubled over this while I was planning my party because I really didn't want it to be like most 21st parties I've been to where everyone is just seated in their own cliques mingling among themselves. So much so that I kept telling my parents and friends months before the party "if everyone in the room is awkward with one another and in their own little groups, then I don't want to hold a party".
But Joshua told me "if your friends are really your friends then they would socialise and not be awkward because if they are awkward, the only person it reflects badly on is you" so, I decided to just chill out and put my faith in my friends.
Now, back to planning
1. Objectives
Knowing the objectives you want to achieve for your party is more important than the dramatic themes you can think of (or at least for me). I feel like knowing the objectives of hosting your birthday party will help you plan so much better. For me, I didn't want it to be awkward so I'd put most of my time and effort in planning the games that my friends can play to get to know each other and encourage them to socialise.
For many of the 21st parties I've been to, the goal was to get as many nice photos possible and so to achieve that, their planning mainly focuses on the theme, deco and getting a photobooth/photographer.
2. Guests
It's not a party without guests. While the venue of your party is important, knowing who and the number of people you would like to invite helps you in choosing your venue a lot easier. If you booked the venue of your party first, say a small boutique hotel before even considering the number of guests you're inviting then you're basically going to blame yourself later when you realise you are unable to invite as many people as you wished to due to space constraints or the hotel's policy.
Because my objective was to minimise the chances of people hanging out in groups instead of socialising, I decided to drop many people off my list and only selected people whom I am confident of them staying in my life for a lonnnnnng time. I wanted my close friends to know each other better and next time when I talk about the people I love, they can finally put a face to the name.
3. Venue
Up next is the venue for your party! Which is probably one of the hardest to decide. Typically, the choices are either at home, cafes, function rooms, hotel or chalets.
However, while I was researching on venues, I found out a few other places that aren't so typical compared to those which I've mentioned. For example, void decks (yeah it is possible and pretty cheap too), botanic gardens, tanjong beach club, KTV rooms or you might just want to book a whole airbnb apartment.
Very often, people choose between booking a cafe venue vs a chalet so I decided to list out some pro and cons (based on own as well as friends' experiences).
But whatever the venue is, make sure you always book in advance especially for SAF chalets because they're half of the time fully booked! I would say book it 3/4 months in advance.
4. Theme
We're down to the more exciting part. *cheers* For me, the theme wasn't thaaaat important to me. However, my friends told me that if I wanted my photos to come out nicely, I should at least have a theme so I had all my friends wear white which was a more convenient colour. And thank god I listened to them because honestly, if you don't have a theme your photos gonna come out pretty wrecked (esp for group photos) unless you have an extremely good photographer + he/she helps you edit the photos taken. I helped John edit all his photos for his birthday because he didn't have a theme and the place wasn't decorated and gawdddd it really took a lot of time and effort especially since I didn't have lightroom.
I know of people who paid for planners to help them decorate their venue and buffet table. But you can always do it yourself and if you have really good friends around, they'll probably volunteer their services to help you decorate the place.
Yanting came right after her work, tired and hungry to help me out (cause I ordered her to haahahahhah). I remember Jingci and Cassa calling me to tell me they'll come early and they even asked me to take a video to show them how much I've decorated the place already so that they can buy more decos to make the place look nicer?!?!?! (I know how expensive it is to buy those that they bought wtf what did I ever do to deserve people like them *bawl eyes out*
Note: You can many decorations and balloons at taobao for a fraction of the price that's sold in Singapore so do make sure you do your homework and plan early. To blow up helium balloons, you can go to any balloon shop to do it for you but I would suggest you just buying/renting a helium gas tank cause it's so much cheaper – I bought myself a helium tank which looked really cute but I have to leave it at the chalet after that because there was no more space in the car. Meh ):
5. Food
Next would be food. Which is probably the simplest? Just cater whatever food you would like to have! For my cake, while I know that many people are particular about how pretty it looks for photo taking, I didn't really bothered about how it looks as long as it tasted good. And boy, did it taste good. I've got many friends coming to me to tell me how nice the cake was and how it's probably the best crepe cake they ever had. *YAY*
6. Entertainment
Keeping your guests entertained may/may not be one of your priorities. You could just have your guests talk among themselves or stay in cliques and watch you strut around the venue but because (back to my objectives) I wanted everyone to socialise and be involved and so, that was what I spent most of my planning on.
I prepared a little quiz that all my friends had to do to get them to socialise and with the points they earned, they will be able to redeem it for the dares that Theo came up with.
But this plan totally failed. Some of my friends did attempt to answer
some of the questions though!
Tool tip: Your games are not going to be played/work unless you have someone else to host it/an emcee.
I initially had Theo in mind to help me out with the games but she couldn't make it back to Singapore in time for my party so the whole plan pretty much failed. Nobody is going to listen to the birthday girl/boy if she does it her/himself especially when she/he has to be going around entertaining other guests.
Nevertheless, my friends all managed to be involved somehow and we played some other games together so that was fine I guess.
Now, when is it a good time to start inviting? AS SOON AS YOUR VENUE IS BOOKED! Yes, I am not kidding. You might think months in advance is wayyyy to soon but I rather be informing my friends early so I get to "secure" the date in their schedule first than tell them a week or two in advance and they might already made plans for that day. What I did was to inform them months in advance and then send out the official invite as a reminder 2 weeks before the actual date of the party.
One thing I've learnt from this is that if your friends are really good friends, they would save the date and plan their work/meet ups etc around it just so they can make it to your birthday - after all, you informed them months in advance right? (Unless it is due to unforeseen emergency circumstances) Because I told my friends in advance, many of them were able to work their schedules out and plan take their leaves in advance (for those who have to work) etc. You get the drift.
Of course, you'll have people who refuse to rsvp (what's new) but that's just that and you just got to learn that not everyone will make time for you. I have friends that took leave, postpone their outings/holidays to make just to keep that date free.
Shout out to those of you who took leave/kept that date free/postpone your stuffs just to attend my party. You guys know who you are and I remember who you are, you are awesome!!
And now that you've got it all prepared, it's time to treat yourself a little and enjoy the time before you step into adulthood :)
P/s. My party was a success of course!
And it's all because I have wonderful friends :)
