Big birthday celebration

[Chocolatey1234]

Someone in our family has a big birthday coming up in summer. Would love to arrange a small to medium sized get together/celebration, bit of a party but unsure what?

Our house is too small, don’t really want to host also not sure what to do and whether enough people would turn up or bale at the eleventh hour (as per many threads on here).

We also don’t really have a nice local hall or community centre nearby and as its summer in theory a marque, terrace garden style party would be nicer than a dark venue.

Thought about going out for a meal but if we invite people do we have to pay for everyones food and drink? Or if not intending to pay how do we word it?

Also one side of the family are richer than us and the other side of the family and snobby re: food and drink and regularly boast about visiting an extortionately high ranking over priced restaurant etc.

A happy medium would be to hire a room or venue that maybe does nice buffet style, tapas style finger food?

Also not sure whether discos are still popular or would go down well especially if some people don’t know many others and mixed ages no small kids but a couple of Secondary School age and possibly some older relatives.

Would you do something like this or have you done something like this recently and any top tips re numbers, wording on invite text, type of venue, food to serve, did a lot let you down last minute or was it successful etc?

I’m guessing this is an older person’s birthday (50+ and not a 21st or similar). Given you don’t want to or can’t host and funds are limited, I think your best bet is finding someone with more space who can host everyone for a buffet/potluck style lunch. Then it’s in someone’s home, not a big hall you have to decorate and hire things for, it’s not outside so no weather to worry about, though ideally there is a garden that people could go into, and there are no huge costs because everyone brings something or you divide up buffet item buying between a few of you.

Or if no one suitable can host and a sit down meal would work (no small children), get the birthday person to choose a favourite restaurant and arrange a prix fixe menu and send to everyone with prices. I’d make it really clear that everyone needs to pay for themselves. I think this is less comfortable though than just a nice buffet and party at home.

Yes an older birthday. Don’t really know anyone with a bigger house that I could ask to
host.

I could host at home but our house isn’t quite big enough, we also have a friendly but medium to biggish older dog in the mix, in summer I usually struggle with fridge space and to cater for a variety of food and dietary intolerances, appetites and preferences I would find hard. Also I would probably rather over cater than under cater but possibly a lot of food wastage and difficult to store it all and keep it cool away from flies, prep it all while keeping the house tidy, introduce people who don’t know many people and top peoples glasses up etc etc. I would be a worn out sweaty mess before anyone even arrived especially if a warm day with cleaning and tidying never mind on the actual day.