Joint birthday party etiquette

[LiegeAndLief]

Dd has been invited to a joint birthday party. One of the girls (the one who has invited us) we know well, the other we have never met although I think I might have chatted to her mum in the playground. Is it unreasonable to buy girl 1 a "proper" present and just spend a couple of quid on a token present for girl 2?

Dd is 2, btw, this is a 3rd birthday, so she doesn't really know or care either way!

no not unreasonable.
I had a joint party for my DD last year with our neighbours DD and half of those I invited didn't know her and didn't buy her anything. So i dont think you are being unreasonable..

YANBU as you don't know the second girl and she didn't invite you. Different if you knew them both equally though.

I'd buy a present for the child who invited us, and just a card for the other. As it happens one of my DSs is going to joint party soon, but both the hosts are in his class so we'll be taking presents for each of them. If we only knew one of them, I'd just get the one though.

I'd get a larger pressie for the one my child was friends with and a smaller one for the other host.

As above, I'd just get a very small token gift for the second girl.

At the risk of hijacking the post though (sorry!) what about when two of your DC have been invited to one girl's party? She is in between their ages and they both know her. Separate pressies from each DC? Or a bigger-than-normal one from them both? When you think about it, they're both going to get a party bag each and a H*y M**l.

We did a joint party for our two with a friend's DD. We had joint invite list then ours and hers. The joint one was for nursery friends that all 3 knew and the invite was from the 3. The "individual" friends had their invites from our two or the other girl and nobody was expected to or even did buy cards/presents for the birthday child they did not know.

It depends Scarlett. Sometime we get two presents, other times one bigger one. That doesn't really help much does it?!

We had a joint party with a neighbours dc a couple of years ago and sent out incites singly as the friends didn't overlap. I would have felt terrible if dd had received a present from other child's friends.

I'd buy for the child you know surely if it's a joint party that child has friends coming who don't know your CDs friend

What, incites to violence, Deafworm? I know, that's how I sometimes feel after the DCs' parties too ...

Lol

@ incites.

OP just buy a present for the child who has invited your DC and a card for the other one, if you want to.

Scarlett when both my DC were invited to a friend's party I bought a bigger gift but I don't think it matters either way.

We have sometimes done a joint party, but the sets of invitees have been more or less separate (only a few where if the parties had been separate they would have been invited to both), we just sent the invitations individually and only those who were friends with both children did two presents. If your child is friendly with both (recently got invited to one like that) buy presents for each.

And the question about two children invited to the same party - usually I get a bigger present than I would normally from the pair of them, sometimes they will each choose something.

Bloody autocorrect, that will teach me to multi task and trust the iPad not to correct me as I type. I noticed CDs after it had gone but not incites

Yes what you have suggested will be absolutely fine op.

I've had a joint party for my DS with a friend's DD for the past 3 years. DS only got presents from the children we invited personally and none from the other guests. This makes perfect sense to me, I wouldn't have expected presents for DS from the children he doesn't know.