To cull classmates from the list in order to give DD a lovely 7th birthday party?

[VinoTime]

My head hurts

I have found and booked a wonderful local venue for DD's 7th birthday party. For £5.95 a head, the children get 2 hours to explore the interactive gallery (soft play, parachutes, lots of things to do with light, sound and colour), watch a 3D film that takes them "into" the future, play party games with the party leader and each get a healthy packed lunch that is provided by the venue. They have also offered to make up a big personalised birthday banner for her free of charge All I have to do is provide the cake. I am absolutely over the moon to have discovered this little gem, which just so happens to be situated in a beautiful world heritage site.

The problem is DD is in a composite class of 25 children - a mix of Primary 2's (18) and 3's (7), and I am a single, low income parent. 10 children would be affordable for me (perhaps a couple more at a big push). The venue is a minimum of 8 and a maximum of 20, so it already stands that we cannot invite everyone.

DD is best friends with possibly the two sweetest children in the world (twins - 1 boy, 1 girl), so a girls only party is out of the question as neither she nor I would ever dream of only inviting the little girl. This of course means we need to invite at least one other little boy so her BF isn't the only one. But how the hell do we decide who to invite and who to not invite?! I don't want to cause any upset, but my hands are tied by both available funds and the venue's restrictions. Also, two of the girls in DD's class are quite nasty wee things and frequently upset/bully her, and I'm really worried that them not receiving an invite will open the floodgates to more teasing

Has anybody got any experience of dealing with this kind of thing and what did you end up doing? Am I being really mean and completely unreasonable to not just book the generic soft play party and invite everyone?

Feel free to invite who you like. Just don't be the horrible parent that openly has her child passing out invites to children in front of others. If you can't quietly locate the parent and give it to them, then perhaps ask the teacher if he/she can simply put it in the bookbag of those particular children, so that they are not handed out in front of the other children.

We did 'whole class' parties for Reception and Year 1, but afterwards tailed it off to just eight/twelve friends. Their social life didn't suffer in any way, as all the families were moving in the same direction.

Three of the 'regulars' from that period are still around at least once a week now, ten years later, but the rest are not 'unfriended' but are only mentioned occasionally. But I think this is pretty normal when children move up to secondary school - they make a whole new circle of friends.

Stop overthinking this. Get her to choose 10 people she wants to attend. My son is often the only boy invited to parties (and he only invites girls to his - and he is y6 !!) so do not worry about the boy / girl thing.

It sounds brilliant - where is it??

At my DD's school, whole class parties are the norm, or you don't get return invites. Annoying but true!

My Ds year 1 wanted a bowling party but didn't seem to have much of a specific group so did the village hall party and he invited about 25...This year he had 7 children from school and a very easy list for him to compile...

and no don't invite the bullies..This smaller party will help cement the friendship that she has got.

I always stick to 10 each, tbh we get too many party invites you can't do them all if you want any kind of a life at all!! I'm never even 1% offended about a child of mine not being invited even to a party of a closish friend of theirs or mine, anyone that is is just being silly imo....