Cost of children’s parties

[WhenTheyComeForYou]

Now, I realise this may come across a bit tight but OMG the cost of children’s birthday parties are crazy!

Ive been planning a class party for my soon to be 6 year old. He’s intent on having a class party and I can’t see a way to make it cheaper than £400/450.

• Hall for 3 hours (covers party and 30mins set up and clean up) £70
• Entertainer £250
• Food and drink £75 (sure it would be more if I added berries and pushed the boat out - I’m not)
• Party bags £50 (2 small toys each and some sweet bags).
• Balloons, tablecloth, cups, plates, banners £20

Can’t do a home party as our house isn’t big enough for 30 kids + parent.

Could do a smaller party but my child doesn’t have a set friendship group yet and would like everyone to attend.

Could potentially share the party with someone but I don’t know anyone well and I’d personally find it a bit awkward. We’ve only been to one shared party.

Ive toyed with having it outside but the weather is unpredictable.

Im personally not keen on just having a bouncy castle in a hall, those parties have fallen a bit flat in my experience and I can’t entertain 30 kids on my own, I just can’t.

We’re in a cost of living crisis yet we’ve been to loads of parties in the past 6 months.

How are people affording this?! £400/500 seems so much to me, or am I being tight?

Does anyone have any fun and cheapish party ideas that have gone down well?

Cut the entertainer and do games yourself? Lots of balloons and music for running around to, we just attended one with parachute games, pass the parcel, and I put a craft table in a corner which was popular. Parties are not cheap, and I found hiring a hall ended up more expensive than an activity party at £x a head. It gets easier with a defined friendship group - we are moving more towards parties of 6-12 children in my daughter's Y1 class.

ETA sorry, missed the line in your post about not being able to entertain them yourself.

Sounds pretty reasonable, you're looking at what, £16 per head? And you're not catering for adults which I know is not the norm here in the UK but culturally doesn't work for us 😆

I think we maxed out at nearly £700-800 last time I did this with an entertainer plus food and drinks for the adults.

Plus I imagine you'll get lots of gifts in the £8-10 range so that's nice too?

Aw, most of the class parties here have been bouncy castle in a hall with some extras thrown in like scooters or footballs etc. and they’ve been amazing!

£250 for an entertainer for 2 hours is expensive. Do you have any friends who could do face painting? Do the music yourself? Play musical statues, pass the parcel, someone who could make things out of balloons?

Scrap the entertainer and have old fashioned party games

We never had an entertainer just a bouncy castle, a load of balloons and a corner set up with kid friendly music. They ran around like crazy things, bounced and danced till they were red in the face and had a great time.

Yes that's why we don't bother it's a con for two hours. We go for a family day / weekend out. You can go the legoland and stay in legoland hotel for the same price as a 2 hour party. As pp have said it's cheaper to go to a soft play or flip out rather than hiring a hall

You can definitely get rid of the party bags. Why pay £50 for some crap plastic toys that will end up in landfill?

You could get a cheaper entertainer or go without, but that does make it hard work for you.

You could maybe shave a bit off the food budget. What have you included for the £75? Kids don't tend to actually eat much at parties so you don't need to provide a full meal. A few slices of pizza/some sandwiches, bit of token veg and some nibbles is fine.

But, yes, whole class parties are expensive.

What about soft play? Really popular round here for infant school age, £13 a head all in. We just did a book and a slice of cake instead of party bags

That’s pricey! Have you got any cheaper halls nearby? Ours was £15 for half a day when we did a big class party. I’m not great with lots of kids but managed to do pass the parcel and a piñata and then they all just ran around with balloons and ate cake. They had a blast and we saved on the entertainer.

I am astounded.
6 years old and you're facing the prospects of a b'day party that is likely to cost that much?
C'mon, that's crazy.
How will you top that as your DC gets older?
Maybe you give in too easily to your DC's wishes, rather than the reality of who will foot the bill for this party of little children going forward.
Can you not ask his teacher if there are any children that your DS appears to especially get on with, and then invite them to a house party with fun games, activities, food, balloons, music, party gift bags etc?
Or is what you're contemplating the price of building up a social network for your 6 yr. old?
My friend's 7 year old DD had a party in a small hall, at a v reasonable price, they had dancing, a lovely cake, all the things you'd expect at a party, a hired 'princess' came by for photo ops with the young guests, and handed out little themed treats for the girls.
Did not cost a small fortune.

I agree it's so expensive and the kind of costs you're talking about is totally unaffordable for us. My DC1 will be turning 7 this year and we have much smaller budget for parties. They've only had two parties before and both worked out to be around £250ish all in. We have 3 kids, it's not possible for us to spend £400 per child on a party, we could go on holiday for that which everyone would enjoy more.

You don't need an entertainer at that price - you can either hire a bouncy castle for much less, or just run some games yourself (tug of war, musical statues, pass the parcel, pin the tail, pinata etc).

At that age half of them mutiny and refuse to be entertained by the entertainer anyway.

Our local gymnastics club does parties. The children just charge around the equipment. Is there anything like that in your area?

We had bouncy castle party in a hall and a craft table , balloons,it’s amazing how much fun a few balloons can create,pass the parcel .TBH the bouncy castle was a big hit .Approx 30 children.
Hall = £50 in village
Bouncy castle =£140
Food approx £30 ,sandwiches,crisps,cucumber,carrots, chopped melon and mango .
Tea ,coffee for parents, did not provide food ,just not necessary.
Paper plates ,table cloths =£20 Amazon
Party bags , cake,bouncy ball ,notebook,colouring pencils,sweet =£25 max Amazon
Made Birthday cake with GF ingredients ( party child coeliac ) ingredients cost approximately £20
So about £275-300 .
I still think a crazy amount TBH !

Ours was around £350 for DD's 5th birthday party - whole class plus a few extras. £200 to hire inflatables/soft play stuff at the local leisure centre including room rent, probably £150 on food/party bags/decorations. Hoping to get away with a smaller party next year with closer friends and somewhere that caters so I don't have to! This seemed to be the cheapest option in our area ('nice' West Midlands town) and to be fair, DD loved it (and received some very nice presents).

The cheapest I’ve done it is in our house with us doing the games. It still cost almost £200 and in a city few people are in a house most families are in flats which are too small for a kids party. They do seem to cost a fortune. I’m glad we’re now in the invite a couple of friends age range! Probably costs more like £100 for dinner and an activity.

Party bags: We just head to the works and buy a book each for them to choose from, that and a bit of cake. There is usually a voucher and a £10 for 10 deal on so could be less than £1 each potentially.

Is there anyone else with a bday at a similar time that might like to share the party? The only time we have done a class party is when we have split costs otherwise like you say it really adds up

This requires time which not all parents realistically can spend the amount of time this would have taken. But I agree it does cut costs.

Flip out/our local alternative definitely NOT cheaper than a hall!! It’s like £20 a head, shitty party bags and pizzas and you have to have a 9am slot so having pizza mid morning 😂

Our kids get one big hall party generally and then it shrinks massively after the first couple of years of school.

Hall generally £70
Entertainnent either homemade eg craft station, disco (easy, speaker and lights already had/£20 from Amazon), bubble machine, ride ons, pass the parcel, musical statues etc
Or once we did get an entertainer for about £200
Not done party bag really - send them away with a cupcake and a balloon.
Make cake yourself.
And make it a one off.

I hired a soft play for a Saturday evening (either 4-6 or 5-7 can't remember), and that cost about £150, then did my own food and instead of a party bag, I got 3 lots of "10 for £10" children's books from The Works to give out

The nearest soft play to us charges £23 per child for soft play plus food and you need a minimum of 20 kids. It's always busy with parties at the weekend, so people are paying it.

We are doing a small group at home. Much cheaper but trickier to plan invites.

Kids parties nowadays seem to have become very competitive. Everyone feels obliged to spend a fortune because that's what everyone else does.

I would be inclined to buck the trend and go for a retro-style traditional kids party at home. Bake a cake. Get a few party nibbles for a birthday tea. Invite some of your son's friends (no more than 9 invitees, so you have 10 children altogether). Recruit one of the other mums as a helper. Plan some traditional party games: pass the parcel; pin the tail on the donkey; musical chairs; musical bumps; dead lions; musical statues; squeak piggy squeak; pass the balloon; hunt the thimble etc

It need only last a couple of hours, maybe 3.30 till 5.30, and some of that will be taken up with eating the birthday tea.

Send each child home with a balloon and a slice of birthday cake. Job done - and for a great deal less than £450!

£50 is alot for party bags - you could do it for half of that. Multipack sticker sheets from amazon, hobby craft have a lot of multipack toys too.

Musical bumps, pass the parcel, pin the tail on the donkey etc can all fill the time without an entertainer

The entertainer sounds expensive. Could you just do an hour if that amount is for 2 hours. We are going with this company for an hour's entertainment which will be £150 followed by half and hour party tea. www.funkidsentertainers.co.uk