Kids birthday parties, how much?

[Overthebow]

How much do you spend on your DCs birthday parties? My DC will be turning 3 this year and it’s the first year we will be doing a proper birthday party as she was too young before but now loves going to her friends parties and asks for her own all the time.

I’m not a fan of soft play parties where you are mixed in with all the other kids, so either want an exclusive soft play party or some kind of entertainment and a hall. Everywhere I’ve looked would come to around £400. We can afford it and would pay it but is this a silly amount to pay for a kids party or is this about right nowadays?

Yep sounds about right, for DD4 so far I’ve spent £20 on hall hire, £250 on entertainment, £100 on bouncy castle and still have decorations, food and party bags which I’m guessing will be another £100 🙈 it’s a dear do!

That's exactly what I just spent on an 'exclusive' softplay party for my 4 year old birthday and it was worth every penny! I didn't have to worry about the food and let's be real the worst thing about softplay is all the other unsupervised brats so it was a price I was happy to pay. We made the cake ourselves and party bag fillers came to around £70

Our 6 yo had an private hire inflatables/s9ft play in October was around £300 all in
Year before trampoline party around £200
10yo had a climbing party which was reduced numbers so around £175

Our closest soft play have just doubled price of exclusive parties to around £400 without food which was previously included and there's uproar
It's a crazy business

My daughter has recently just celebrated her 4th birthday and we saved costs and energy by having it hosted at the local pizza express - all we had to buy was the pizzas, drinks etc birthday cake, party bags and balloons. So for about 24 kids and adults it cost just over £370 just for food, drink and desert if it had been a hall hire £400 would of just about covered the fee for hiring the hall. With pizza - most kids like it and it's spacious if you book early and they give you a special section of the restaurant just for the kids. She had a few friends from nursery plus some family, it went well and the restaurant made a whole load of money and treated us very very well. We'd do it again but still at a small scale as there still was an element of stress involved.

Recent spends on DS (4) birthday

Hall hire £50

Entertainer £180 - worth every penny, loads of soft play stuff and did games with the kids

Made the cake myself + food nibbles + party bags maybe an extra £80 altogether?

Bit mad really but still cheaper than soft play / trampoline places near us, plus both parents could come / could bring younger siblings at no extra cost

I'm amazed at people finding halls so cheaply!

I have two halls, and the price is £50 per hour. I advise people to book for 3 hours at least, for a 2 hour party; and we are the cheapest BY FAR, in our area.

Because many halls are linked to the community or church and don’t have the pound sign at their core

£50 per hour! That is much more expensive than the ones I’ve looked at and we’re in an expensive area. They are community village halls and church halls though so that might make a difference.

I've only done softplay parties. Thought I might book a hall and get entertainment etc this year. It's just so expensive though so just went with for softplay again which is about £325 if we get the full 25.

Getting a hall was more likely to be £400+ unless we just do bouncy castle and party games. Also all the parties we have been to in a hall looked stressful for the parents! Softplay u turn up and it's all done for u 😄

Next year she'll be 7 so she can choose maybe 10 friends and we can take them to trampoline park or similar.

I would say usually around £200-250. We just did 2 parties - one a village hall with bouncy castle and one an activity (about £20) per head (we had 8 kids). It was around £100-150 each for the bouncy castle/hall and the activity for the other, then add in plates/cups, food, drinks, cake and party bags for the littler one was about another £50-100 each.

No way would I spend £400 on a birthday party, especially for a 3 year old. At that age, they still get quite overwhelmed at parties and do a lot of clinging to parents. I'd do something low key and simple. At that age, we mostly just had a few friends over for a little tea and cake at home. It was basically a playdate with cake and they were thrilled.

We just paid £250 for our 4 year olds party. I did cringe at the price. Last year’s in a gym with our own catering actually cost more at £300.

Ds will be 3 soon. I’m not spending £400+ on a party!

I roughly go by how old they are for how many friends to invite. So we will invite 3 friends over. Plus the parents and odd adult friends of ours ( who are family equivalent).
Play in garden, will set up some sand areas and lots of diggers as he wants a digger party, cake.

I fully understand that, and have done the same in the past. I was just pointing out you are rightly paying a premium.

We've had a mix.

At age 3 I'd say bouncy castle in a church hall with some pound shop face masks for them to colour in is about right. £90 for hall, £80 for a fancy bouncy castle and £50 for an entertainer. We've done the fancy middle class crudités food (£100) or chips and nuggets (£30). The crudités were for our first child, we realised the error of our ways second child. Don't cater for parents.

Also everyone hates party bags. Just do cake or sweets. Maybe a book from the works or one of those bulk online bookshops.

We've also done joint parties, science parties, trampolining, private hire cinema parties and rugby tots / football / swimming / sports parties. Cost from £50 (private hire cinema) to £500 (science party).

I'd say my top tips are
(1) parties get more expensive as you go along. Start with a bouncy castle whilst you can get away with it. Relive your own youth.
(2) Don't cater for parents with crudités and vegetables. Kids like chips. Air fryers are life. They make this so easy. See also pizza.

I'd say £500 for a 3 year olds party is excessive. Save it for a few years when they're at school and it matters more.

We are a church and we are still the cheapest around.
We needed to put our prices up because it was costing us more in heating than the price people were paying.

We are a small church in London. We've had to put our prices up because it was costing us more than we were getting what with the prices of heating etc.

I can assure you, we are the cheapest in our area.

I'm paying just over £400 for my 2 year old's party this year. The total cost includes: exclusive hire of a soft play / party area for up to 20 children including their food and snacks and a mini disco for them (£250), bouncy castle hire (extra £50), a Peppa Pig mascot (extra £40), and a professionally made personalised cake (£65).

Might be silly money to some, but we can afford it so why not. 🤷‍♀️ Obviously we could have made it cheaper by removing the mascot and the bouncy castle, and getting a shop bought cake.

And the relevant word that wasn’t In your previous post is…. London!

I wouldn't bother with a big party for a 3yo. We did it for DS1's third and tbh he didn't enjoy it much. So for DS2 we had a few of his nursery friends round. We did a couple of party games, had some sensory play and craft stuff and did a birthday tea. I'd save the expensive parties for when they actively want them.

We did a soft play "exclusive hire" for our twins 3rd birthday, and all in (including 2 professionally made cakes - we were bonkers I admit), I think it was about £800...! But it was the first time they'd had a "proper" party, and we got carried away. I regret it now tbh. The kids (6yo now)don't remember it, and all we have to show for it is about 6 crap photos of the backs of random kids heads from their nursery, that they can't remember any of the names of.

We paid around £300 for a 3 year olds party this winter - £200 exclusive hire of soft play cafe, plus £5 per head for the party tea, £15 on a supermarket cake and about £20 on party bags (bought stuff in bulk because we also did a party for older DC in the summer - if you’re organised AliExpress and ebay are great for party bag fillers like mini bubbles and fun pencils and for balloon sets/character decorations etc if you’re into that).

The older kids party was more expensive - £120 venue hire (venues are very expensive where we are, this is one of the cheapest I could find), £100 bouncy castle hire, £140 Facepainter, £170 entertainer, I did the food myself and party bags were about £50 but had leftovers for the 3yo. If we do it again next year I won’t bother with a Facepainter, the kids enjoyed it and she was amazing but they’d have been just as happy without.

The most recent party I held was
£40 hall
£120 disco
£30 party bags
£10 cake
£30 food
£10 decorations
So £240. I wouldn't want to spend more.

We always gave the choice, party or present.

So no present at all if a party?
I bet they didn’t select party very often?

That seems a little bit excessive to me. We're in the SE and have just held DD's birthday. Entertainment was £145 for two hours and hall was £45. So £190, plus £30 on party bags and £30 on food? About £250 in total, but it was a shared party with a classmate so only half the cost.

When she was three, we hired the same hall, but did it all DIY, crafts, games etc. That was no more than £150 in total.