To be shocked at kids party prices

[4babiesforever]

almost 4 year old has been getting invited to birthdays parties at nursery and from a club he goes to over the past year and a bit and has now asked for a birthday party of his own this this year.
AIBU to be shocked how much it seems to plan a birthday party for kids or should I have expected this?!

• will be inviting up to 30 kids (nursery class, some pals from club, and lots of cousins lol). cant fit that in our house and I thought th cheapest option would be to hire a community hall as DS would like a bouncy castle. he would like a theme and I’m thinking I could make a lot of the decorations from cardboard, a friend has offered to dress up lol, but even so adding up the cost of hall hire, bouncy castle, and food it all adds up. I’ve been trying to think of an activity that could double up as party favour to take home for example painting themed plaster cast models (I’ve seen kits that have several peices), and making themed cookies to take home (or price of the cake) or books from works etc but still adds up (and I’m planning in a way do I don’t even have to spend on an actual ‘gift bag’) I will provide food for adults as my family would have to travel. everyone I try and cost everything up it comes up to £300/400 - is this normal?
  or does anyone have any good tips? AIBU to be so clueless about this all or to ask for advice please oh ps - theme is ocean animals Tia x

We’ve hired a big soft play for up to 40 and that comes in at about £550 with food.

This is for DS’s 5th birthday. We have invited all his class as it’s their fist year at school and quite a few have done similar which has been really good as a lot of us didn’t know anyone else there when our DC started school as hardly any live within catchment.

DS has no young family members such as cousins so the rest of the invites are to friends he met in nursery etc.

I imagine from yr1 onwards the parties will become a bit more targeted towards smaller groups as friendship groups develop between the children but I’ve found this years parties really good for getting everyone together and am glad they’ve taken place like this.

Totally agree with this. We have just been to one for four of them and it was great. They hired someone where nice, and chipped in for one big cake. We all got assigned one person to get a present for so it cut down on the masses of gifts.

I’m a fan of a village hall party without the bouncy castle. We went to one where they’d made various pirate themed activities, mostly out of cardboard (throw the beanbag in the shark’s mouth, walk the plank, pin the eye patch on the pirate) that was fab.

For my 4yo’s last party we hired the local village hall, turned all the lights off, put some disco lights on and just let them dance! We did a couple of rounds of musical statues/musical chairs, provided a few sandwiches/crisps/fruit/cake and a friend of ours did a couple of magic tricks. Can’t have cost us more than £100.

I did 45 kids in a village hall with an entertainer and with everything included. Food, party bags, decorations, entertainer, hall etc it was just under 500, were in the home counties. I think what you have said is spot on

@butterdish93 where roughly in the country are you? I’m genuinely interested where you can get a bouncy castle for £50! They are £100 minimum by us, and that’s excluding delivery and set up. It came to £145 for a bog standard one! I gave up!

@unicornpower

I know this is totally down to forward planning and luck but we bought a whole load of space hoppers in the end of summer sale at Aldi- I think they ended up being £1 each- and let the kids go wild in the village hall. The kids went crazy for it. Forward planning is everything. If you see it cheap, buy it up and store it, if you have the space. Same goes for post-Halloween sweets, post Christmas chocolate coins, end of season at B&M…

Probably totally politically incorrect - but when mine were little - I used to cut the numbers to an achievable amount in the early years parties of infant school - to have a ‘girls’ party for my Dd and a ‘boys’ party for my DS.

both were in primary school classes where boy / girl split was pretty 50/50 so I didn’t feel bad only inviting the girls of the class to the princess party etc for my DD and the boys to a ‘space’ party or ‘football’ party

before everyone piles on that boys can like princesses and girls can like football etc - yes of course they can and I totally agree that everyone can like anything and that princesses and dinosaurs and football are not gendered and I don’t think pink is only for girls.

But I couldn’t afford a whole class party and doing a ‘boys party for the boys’ and ‘girls party for my girl’ was a simple way of deciding which half of the the class to invite that seemed easiest when they were little and friendships were very fluid. I wasn’y the only mum to do this - it was pretty common then - though maybe not now?

as they got older and really had firm friends we never did ‘big’ parties any more and then we invited a couple of their closest friends (of either sex ) to spend their day together and do something fun like an outing or sleepover etc.

We charge £20 an hour to rent the hall. If you made the food and baked the cake yourself, decorate cookies as an activity, brought music from home and did party games you could do it comfortably for £150 for an hour and a half party (with 30 mins either side to set up clear up) even with nice food cider is the go to adult drink around these parts.

That sounds quite a lot for that sort of party - we've done several and I usually budget £250 max.
£50 - hall
£85 - bouncy castle hire
£50 - food (crisps, grapes, sandwiches, houmous, bread sticks and homemade cake)
£40-50 - party bags
A bit more on a couple of other activities - hundreds of temporary tattoos (always go down a treat) and the big rolls of colouring in sheets - take felt tips from home.
We have tended to just serve tea and coffee for the adults. Make a big enough cake to offer them a slice.

For the past two years we've had food at our house then taken the kids to a local activity by bus. It's around £20/head for the activity plus supermarket food & homemade birthday cake. Much cheaper and they still have a lot of fun.

No need for party bags!

Lol when DD started school my mum and my MIL both separately said don’t bother with class parties it’s a nightmare so I always took that and ran with it. Too expensive, and it sounds like hell. I remember having a whole class party once and it was probably one of my worst parties. I feel bad because I know my dad spent a fortune on it. Didn’t enjoy it half as much as the smaller parties we had with my actual friends.

When my kids were little a local hall used to cost £30 to hire for the afternoon and it came with soft play equipment that you could put out. Could do a kids buffet for £20, job done. Sadly I think those days are gone and everything costs a fortune now.

For whole class parties we used to hire a hall from a church for £25 an hour usually hire for 4 hours.
Dh would set up his dj equipment and we would have a disco with party games.
Then we brought a bouncing castle from a bouncing castle hire company that was closing business. So we would have a disco and bouncing castle in the hall.

The local council leisure centre by us does parties up to 35 people for £100 for 1.5 hours of hall including soft play and trampolining and eating space / they don’t advertise anywhere though as they’re full the whole time! Perhaps see if one near you has something similar?

if it’s the summer, bring food to a park and have balloons - kids really don’t know the difference if they get to run around madly and get a party bag at the end

I’ve done party activity craft before for party bags - crowns, necklaces etc - or tbh these days Temu etc would get you things the kids love (ie plastic tat!) for a good price.

some places also do vouchers on various offer sites where it would work out much cheaper to buy loads of vouchers and do it as a DIY party - the arcades near us do that for example

or don’t give into the pressure if you can’t afford it - several will do nothing, several will have tea and party games at their house.

I do understand the thinking but did their sibling attend?

It is kind of reinforcing those stereotypes - and I have a truck mad ds and a dd who loves Princess Anna above all else so I’m not having a go but it’s very marked, isn’t it?

It’s actually more expensive. about £25 per head nowadays + party bags + cake. It’s only cheaper if you genuinely invite 6 friends. If it will be 10-12 kids then it’s £250-300 not including cake and party bags

What about a pool party? Could work very nice with an ocean theme. Hiring a pool might be cheaper and you could provide pool toys and let the kids take them home with favours.
Ive hired a council pool for my sons party for £140 for an hours exclusive use of the kid pool and the big pool and an hours use of the party room. I think I can have around 70 people in the pool.

We did our first larger, non-home party this year. 10 kids at an indoor football place with pizza and drinks catered by the venue for €130. We added a piñata for €15 and I filled it with cut price Halloween sweets and €2 worth of 1-5c coins. They loved it. And it didn’t take me a week to tidy our house pre and post party.

DS has a November birthday. All the Summer borns around here celebrate outside, which really keeps the costs down. One lady I know told her youngest son his birthday was in the Summer. He was at least 6 before he discovered the truth.

I’m doing a leisure centre soft play and party room which is only 220 in London, but I’ve spent nearly 200 in food and drink and party bags and decor

Usually the bouncy castle alone is enough! A quiet corner with play dough; crayons etc. A dressing up box is also a good way of occupying this age group. Most girls have princess dresses these days and you could borrow from friends. Hats bags beads cloaks, paper crowns and masks [collected from McDonalds] Doesn't need to cost anything. Definitely keep the party under two hours. Personally I would stipulate no presents, but perhaps you may feel differently about that. You can always keep back some gifts as no child need 30 toys! The idea of books from the works is really a good one. That and a piece of cake to take away is plenty. Finger foods can be as simple as you like. Don't encourage the children to load their plates but to eat as they go. Go for an after lunch spot so fun food is all you need. Bottles of juice named for each child, with sippy tops will cut down on spilled drinks, and allow them to drink when they needed. On a practical note a few spare pairs of pants may be called for! Wet wipes! Tissues for noses. Most of all RELAX. I don't know how modern mums feel about staying at the party or if they grab a couple of hours free time, especially if they have other children, so make sure that there are enough adults staying to help. [One adult to five children should be enough.]

For the numbers I actually think that’s pretty cheap!

I saw your later post and think it’s a good idea to cut numbers, you could ask nursery to help with an invite list of 15 kids who your son plays with.

Check the size of the bouncy castle and how many kids can go on, think what the others will be doing if it’s max 10 kids at a time (for example).

Also I get your point on party bags but think you can do them and keep them simple (doesn’t have to be loads of plastic tat) but kids love them. Party bags are so exciting to 3/4yr olds!

It was less about ‘this party is boys stuff for boys and this party is a girls party with girls stuffin terms of theme and much more about halving numbers to keep it manageable in size and cost.

if my DD had wanted a football party I would have given her one - but at that little age when I said what do you want to do for your birthday - she favoured princesses and mermaids and the boys were into football dinosaurs and space. Totally there choice.

At home they shared all the toys and everyone played with everything a lot of the time - we had the full range of dolls, trains, dinosaurs, dressing up, lego, craft etc etc - but they all knew what they liked and wanted on their birthday and so I obliged with their choices which were pretty stereotypical - but again not unusual at the time.

class party was very much school friends only - we then did family stuff separately.

£50 for enough food for 30 kids, plus tea and coffee and a homemade cake for 60 (assuming 1 parent per child). In 2026?!

Well I guess I'm not counting the things of which I would always have enough in to not need to buy (tea, coffee, milk, most baking ingredients) and I haven't thrown a party yet in 2026 but yes I don't think it was much more than this the last couple. Three loaves of bread, ham and cheese, a few multipacks of crisps, few punnets of grapes, bread sticks and houmous. The parties I've thrown like this have been for 3-6 year olds so not huge appetites. You're right though that to buy all of the tea, coffee, and cake ingredients from scratch would end up costing more than this these days.