Adult Birthday Party Tips

Whether celebrating a milestone birthday, 30, 40, 50, 60 or any age in between, creating a fun event just takes a little imagination.

Themes
“Over the Hill” is always a popular theme for an adult milestone birthday, but there are some other variations that can be fun as well.

Back to School Party

• Hold the party at a school gym.
• Invite old school friends
• Decorate the room with memorabilia from the honoree’s school years.
• Have everyone bring favorite foods from when they were in school – Twinkies, Sno Balls, Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Forever-Young Party

• Decorate the party room with posters and advertisements for vitamins, exercise equipment, liposuction (you can find small ads and have them blown up at any copy store).
• Request that guests bring “how to stay young” gag gifts such as vanishing cream, prune juice, etc.
• Set up a buffet with “healthy foods”.

Surprise or Consent
Surprise parties can be a fun option.  Here are some suggestions for pulling off a successful surprise party:

• Have the party at a non-suspicious location such as a relative’s house, restaurant, favorite bar or put, bowling alley, etc.
• Throw the party a few weeks before or after the actual date.
• Throw an early morning (breakfast) or late night (dessert) party to catch a suspicious guest of honor off guard.
• Make sure everyone parks away from the party site.
• Instead of the usually “jump out and yell surprise”, have guests walk in on the birthday person as if nothing out of the ordinary is going on.

Invitations
There are a lot of options for invitations, from traditional packaged ones that match the tableware and theme decorations to custom ones, even electronic email ones.  Here are some other suggestions:

• Photocopy a birth certificate or announcement and fill it in with party information.
• For a vocation theme party, send invitations on prescription sheet mock-ups for a doctor, report cards for a teacher, memo forms for a manager or executive, and…
• Write the party details on an inflated balloon (Use a felt pen).  Deflate it and send it in an envelope with instructions to blow it up and get the details.

The Way We Were
Create a scrapbook as a gift to the birthday person.  Ask guests to mail you their favorite snapshots, memories and anecdotes involving the guest of honor.  They might also send poems, toasts and well wishes.  Bind it into a book or scrapbook and present it at the party.

Decorations
Here are some ideas for creating a festive party environment:

• Collect baby pictures, yearbooks and other mementos from the guest of honor’s childhood and turn them into a centerpiece for the table.
• Fill the party room with helium balloons with ribbon or balloon bouquet and theme weights.
• Create a gazebo effect by attaching multi-color streamers from the middle of the ceiling and draping them down to the walls.
• The list can go on and on…