Children's party - big venue, not enough guests!

[NovemberAli]

I've arranged DD's party for her 4th birthday, it's the first one we've done which is not just a family tea sort of thing.

We have a tiny house so had to book a venue and ended up booking local leisure centre hall with inflatable, suitable for 30 children as DD said she wanted to invite quite a few from her nursery. So have sent out invites to ~20 and over a week later only have 5 confirmed (plus 3 little siblings), these are from children whose mums I know. I haven't had a response at all from the others . Should I bite the bullet now and try to downsize, or potentially have them rattling around just the 6 of them? Party's in about 3 weeks, I'm such a socially awkward person anyway I was already dreading it!

you have plenty of time to get more replies back. I would wait another week and a half and then send out reminders to any who havent replied saying you need a reply back by a specified date. You cant start worrying with 3 weeks until the party as people are notoriously crap at replying early and will leave it until nearer the date of the party.

I recently did a party for my 4 year old and most people replied in the last week p, one the day before and another never replied but turned up. It's still early days.

I had the same a couple of weeks ago booked a roller disco, 5 couldn't come and 5 didn't reply and did not turn up so there was only 6. It was fab!
Parents had a go and kids got longer to skate then had food and nails and tattoos done all got special treatment as they had time.
Birthday girl said she was pleased no one else came. I still had to pay for 10 but it was pretty stree free!

Thanks for the replies, I'm so new to this sort of thing, I just don't know what the children's party etiquette is! It's all changed since my day

But I'm reassured that I might just be panicking too early, otherwise like you say, they'll just have plenty of room to run around in. Aargh, parenting is so stressful!!

We had ds2's in the village hall. Like you we invited about 20 and only half of them could come. I was really worried that we had this massive space and no one to fill it, but they ran round like crazy beasts and had a great time! Also got a friend to bring a small bouncy castle which took up a bit of the space.

He loved it and wants the same again for his 5th!