Friday, July 28, 2017

Tips For Planning Summer Birthday Parties



It can be hard for kids that have a summer birthday. They see all their friends having parties during the year, but often in summer people are away and unable to attend parties.  Over the years I have picked up some tips that I am going to share with you.

Both my kids have summer birthdays. The oldest is July 4th, and the youngest is August 28th.  In terms of invitations, there isn't an issue with the July birthday - they can be handed out at school in June. It does pose a bit of a problem with vacations though, because many people spend that first weekend of July at cottages.  There a few options to combat this:
  1. Host the party in June while school is still in session
  2. Host the party the weekend AFTER the birthday, when people may be back from vacation (although in our experience, many people seem to travel during the first two weeks of July)
  3. Keep it small - only invite 2 or 3 of their closest friends that you know are able to make it.
Things get a bit trickier for the late August birthday. When kids are young, as parents we don't always have contact information for the school mates they want to invite to their party.  Our school does not give out a class list.  When you don't know the kids, it can be difficult to get in touch over the summer.
  1. In mid - June, send a note to school for the friends your child wants to see over the summer. Ask for their contact information.
  2. Send invites a little earlier than normal (approximately 4 weeks before party). Put the RSVP date as 2 weeks before the party. (this gives you time to change party plans if most of the invited kids are not able to attend). 
  3. Try to avoid sending invites at the end of school - it may seem like you are being pro-active; however, so much stuff comes home that it is likely to get lost. If it doesn't get lost right away, it will likely get forgotten about because it is so far away.
  4. Plan a mid-September party. Close enough to their birthday that it still feels natural to celebrate, but allows invites to be given out at school, and most people are more available.
Mr. K's birthday party is in a few weeks. I am in the process of sending out invites now - and will see how things stand around the 15th of the month. If no one is able to come, we will end up rescheduling to September.

In past years we have been lucky - most of the kids have been able to come. Now that they are getting older though and his friends are changing, I am not so confident.

4 comments:

  1. Great tips! Summertime birthdays can be hard to plan

    ReplyDelete
  2. These are great tips and ideas, summer time birthdays are tough, and my one daughter's birthday is in the summer and it was always hard holding her birthdays

    ReplyDelete
  3. We have two parties coming up the end of the month,one is a beach party and the other we are having in the backyard.Thanks for the tips and ideas they are sure to come in handy !

    ReplyDelete
  4. I seriously wish one of my daughters birthdays landed in the summer. would love to have a huge bbq to celebrate it. The one is in September tho so sometimes the weather ends up being on our side

    ReplyDelete

I love hearing from my readers, feel free to leave me a comment! (Comment Moderation is enabled, it will be published after approval)