triple birthday party - present etiquette

[bumpy06]

Hi

We are organising a party for my son and his 2 friends - two boys and a girl. The thing is we don't want people to think they have to give 3 presents so we are trying to work out how to say please only bring one present without it sounding like an order to bring a present. I have never checked but I think everyone does bring something

They are a class of about 28 - 18 boys and 10 girls so even though not everyone will come we thought we could say something like. "If you want to bring a present please only bring one. Maybe the girls coiuld give a present to L and the boys give to E and E"

Is this all far too complicated and should be just trust people to do what they want to do and can afford

A three-way party I went to recently suggested buying one £5 Argos voucher and the vouchers would then be split between the three children

The kids are all 6 so are young enough to want stuff so I don't think vouchers would cut it. But 8 things each is more than enough.

There was a 4 way party recently, they had a photo of all four children on invite, but the invite only came from one of them, think it went something like 'we are having a party and x would like to invite dd' so probably easiest would be for girl to invite the 10 girls, and divide the boys into two groups, if you can work out which boys are more friendly with which other boy. Then if the three are all friends maybe each give the other two a present.

I was going to suggest what duracell said. Send the invite from one child only and split the class.

We had exactly the same dilemma - are we in the same class?! - with the same girl/boy split and the same birthday girl and 2 boys. In the end our invitation read 'No presents please, but if you would be welcome to give each child a pound or two to save up to buy something special'.
In the end almost everyone bought a present, but didn't feel the need to spend so much on each child. One person didn't bring anything, but that was OK too.

We had explored the options given above, but then worried what would happen if all the people invited by x got ill and they only ended up with 2 presents when everyone else had 7 etc...

The children I was talking about were all 6.

6 year old DD thoroughly enjoyed spending the vouchers and money she got from her birthday party too.

Forgot to say, this was a reception class and lots of the friends were shared so awkward to do the 'you invite so-and-so' bit...

Ditto with 5yr old boy and his 6 quid - and I have to say that all the presents were great, probably the best ones overall in 11 years of parties...

Maybe get people to bring "unisex" presents, like books, games, puzzles, craft activities. Then ask the birthday boys and girls to pick one each until they are all gone (like a lucky dip if you like).

I was going to say that most people will just buy three presents - my DS went to one like this recently.

But I prefer mamij's idea...

thanks everyone. We are probably mamking it all too complicated, I thought of what if no girls can come by some freakish incident and she gets nothing or vice versa with one of the boys