The First Birthdy

As a first time, hands-on and party planner mom my excitement was focused on creating the party for our baby boy's first birthday, but it was easier said than done.

So first up was the venue, I searched through a lot of websites and did some research but ended up exhausted because venues are very expensive or not within our budget I guess. I have been wanting to create a "we have it all" kind of party, meaning, balloon set-up, themed stage, small chairs, buffet, magicians, performers, food carts, the works! It was way out of our budget plus come to think of it baby boy will just be wondering what is happening right?

Anyway, enough of day dreaming, so we started to focus on being practical and counting guests (hardest part lol!) and to creating our menu. We decided to do Jollibee Kids Party, I am an OC person when it comes to details but I realized it is harder now that I have the bulilit to to take care of, so for this party I give up my oc-ness and let the suppliers do the stressing haha!

Venue and Food
Why Jollibee? They have it all already, they have party host, game masters and who doesn't know Jollibee himself who will be available for a good 30-min or so during the party, whew! For our food we chose the Chicken and Spaghetti meal with drink, Regular Yum with Cheese and Peach Mango Pie for dessert. How did we come up with this decision? Why no french fries or sundae? Because we didn't want to see food gone to waste which equals money gone to waste too. French fries can become soggy and sundae can just melt easily - no one would eat them so sayang. Regular Yum with Cheese and Peach Mango Pie on the other hand can be taken home and consumed after the party, hence no waste and heartache. (I hate wasting food)

Dessert Buffet and Balloons
Faye's Balloon was our choice out of the possibly handful of suppliers that I checked out online together with their Facebook Page.
Why? Simply because the owner is very prompt in answering queries through chat, so you see if you put your business online, make sure to have someone ready to assist anyone who drops by for some queries. I haven't tried their desserts but I did base our decision from reviews of the people they have worked with, oh which reminds me I should do mine too. True to their words of creating pur event special, the dessert buffet was the talk of the party, some even thought that I was the one who did the set-up but told them about Faye's Balloonn and how good they were and did not give me an inch of stress at all. It was indeed a good and yummy decision. You may search them on facebook for your inquiries.

Birthday Cake
I almost forgot about the cake! Good thing one of my best friends who is now based in Singapore still has the comtac details of Chef Mac, the one who did bake the cake and cupcakes for her son's first birthday. But it was a fingers-crossed kinda feeling shooting the Chef an email because it was like what two years ago already? But anyway I still tried, and forgot about it for a few days and tried contacting other suppliers for the cake. But lo and behold an email reply came in after a few days with Chef Mac giving his number and fb page so we can communicate better. To make the story short, he got to do our cake, it didn't feel like it was the first time we talked, he is super friendly and very open about what we wanted the cale to look like, ang bait, super! When he personally delivered the cake at the venue, he made it bigger than the original size we talked about, I insist on adding an additional fee for his gas or just by making our cake bigger, he said no and it was his decision to do so and as a gift na rin siguro, seldom you will find people who are still more on quality and good service, let me know if anyone of you wants his contact details so I can recommend you (naks feeling close)

Tokens
This was non-negotiable, I can not take this part away from me lol! I love creating loot bags period. What we have inside our loot was a drawing notebook, a piece of pencil, a colored pen, and a set of small colored pencils and there you go a good back to school kind of loot for the kids.

Gifts
From our wedding to our little one's baptismal, we always try to be practical eventhough for some it seems weird but hey rather than having stuff you don't really need. For our baby's baptismal last January, we asked our Ninongs and Ninangs to gift our little one with educational or musical toys because we have so much blessings of hand-me-down clothes from cousins and friends. For his first birthday, I was not planning on asking in particular, I figured it will be awesome to be surprised by their gifts, but a few weeks into the party, friends and family are messaging me asking if we have a wish list, that get me to thinking that even they are having a hard time figuring out what to gift for our baby. And so I thought, he has toys, clothes etc. Hmmm what could we probably put on the wish list? And then the thought bubble came in, his daily needs, that would be perfect so I immediately snapped a photo of his Diaper (Drypers, we asked for one size bigger so we can stock it), baby wash (Human Heart Nature), and baby wipes (Pigeon). Good for a top 3 list, sent them over to our event page on FB and informed everyone if they wanted to get those as a gift, it will be very useful for us.

Update: we got loads of them and practically it was the best wish list I ever did lol!

Yes I may have not have achieved the party type that has been running through me eversince, but what's important is, we had eveyone together in one place celebrating our precious gift which is our baby boy. Maybe I will try to do that on his 7th Birthday, at least by that time he will get to enjoy his own birthday as well.