Combined birthday parties for children? What would you do?

Question

My daughter will be 3 in May and my son will be 1 in May just 6 days later. I am hesitant to combine their parties, but for the sake of family I feel that I must. Does anyone else have the same problem and if so can you provide me with some good ideas for a combined birthday party for a toddler girl and a baby boy's 1st birthday. Thanks

Answer 1

I kinda have the same problem as you. My son was 2 on July 10 and my daughter was 1 on June 29. I decided to have 2 separate parties only because it was my daughter's first and I felt she needed the spotlight. I will combine them from now on until they get older because I had one one weekend and the other was the very next weekend. I was thinking that when I combine them that I would have 2 smaller cakes so they can each have their own cake and since they are boy and girl like you, I feel it necessary to get a girly one and a boy one. Maybe do kinda 2 small parties in one. Decorate with blue and pink. Good Luck!

Answer 2

When you run into this problem in the future you can look at it this way.
One option for older kids would be to have the birthday of one of them at another time of the year. A person I know holds his birthday in July because its on Dec 24 and it gets to hectic with Christmas. Being an adult this is a choice he made.Kids are pretty understanding. if you explain to them that you want them to have their 'special month' all to them self and let them pick another month (with some guidance from you of course) they may be more then willing to make the change.

The other option is as you say just have the party on the same day. I would pick a day that falls on neither birthday to make sure one does not feel left out. Then you could either have 2 cakes or as the case of a set of twins I know, one larger cage decorated half for him and half for her.

Over all I would lean towards the same day. Twins do it all the time and there is no problem.

Now for this year a 1 year old is not going to really care if they are sharing a birthday with their sibling. They will do the same thing as they would do at a siblings party if it was not a shared day. LOL that is try to open all the presents and have a jolly good time playing with all the kids. So for this year I would just share the day.

Hope my random blathering gave you some things to consider.

Answer 3

My girls' birthdays are three weeks apart and we've been doing combined parties for them for the last two years. I try to schedule it some where in the middle between their birthdays. They are only 5 and 3 right now so they have no complaints about it and it's worked out better money wise, time wise and with family that can attend.

I sit with them and we choose a theme - easier for me with two girls - and we decorate. The first year I made them their own cakes but the second year I made one big cake with lots of candles on it for them to blow out.

On the day of their actual birthday I make them a special dinner and make another little cake, brownies, or cupcakes and sing just to that child and give them a small gift to open.

We will continue to do it this way until they are in school and want to start inviting friends to their birthday parties -then we'll go back to separate parties.

Since you are thinking of having a combined party for a girl and a boy, you can find an interest they share for the theme or go with ones that sort of match. For my son's first birthday we did a combined party with my niece. My son had Clifford and my sister in law did Strawberry Shortcake for my niece. Both themes had a lot of red in it so they went pretty good together.

Answer 4

This year I will be having this same problem. But since my daughter will be 1, we are having separate parties. Another reason is that my son is already jealous of my daughter, I want him to have his own special day where all the attention is on him for his 3rd Birthday.

Answer 5

All three of my girls are born in August. We were doing seperate birthday parties but not only was it very costly and time consuming for me and my husband we also ran into alot of people showing up at one but not being able to make it to another and the girls noticed it causeing problems.

Now we do a combined party and they each have their own cakes of their choice and their own theme.

When they get a little older and have a few more friends of their own we will go back to doing seperate parties but for now it is just easer.

Answer 6

I just made a cake for a friend of mine who's kids are 3 and 1. I love to let one year old's have their own personal cake. So anyway, I made a Winnie the Pooh cake (for the guests). And two smaller ones shaped like balloons for the girls. Put the number 1 on one of them and 3 on the other. Then at the party she took the "balloons" off the sticks that held them to Pooh's hands and gave each child her own cake.

I think combined parties are fine until they get old enough to complain about it or have their own friends to invite.

Answer 7

For the Sake of the Family?????

We have the same problem, only the kids are ONE DAY apart. So we have the parties one week apart -- has never been a problem for anyone in the family!! That way each child has their own special day. Please don't combine the parties -- if your family objects, they are pretty childish.

Answer 8

Have a big party for them and invite all the friends and family you want. Then on the actual days of their respective birthdays have cake and ice cream at home.

Answer 9

my sister in law and I always combine our 2 kids parties Mine is a girl and hers is a boy ( 3 years apart)
what we did was have the kitchen decorated in Princess and the dining room decorated in spiderman, they both had medium sized cakes of theor own and we sang together.

or you could also just choose one theme such as the Happy feet theme, or some kid movie or just the "Happy Birthday" theme and just have one bouquet of red or pink ballons and one yellow or dark blue balloons in different corners.

Theres so much you can do...

Last year we actually went halves at Chuck E cheese, where nothing is by gender, its all chuck e cheese themed, who dosent like that????!!!!

Answer 10

i would do i combined party also, but have on side of the party decroated for your son and one side for your daughter and have two cakes one grily and one boy so that they feel equal and have there on thing but together