Brooks and Madison are one! Not sure how we got here so quickly, but we recently celebrated our twins’ first birthday. How did this past year go by so fast? Leading up to the big day, I researched all kinds of fun first birthday party ideas. If you’re in the process of planning a first birthday party too, below I’m sharing some favorite ideas you may want to incorporate too!
First Birthday Party Ideas
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Where To Start
First things first, where to start? Personally, I started with Pinterest. Whenever I’m planning a party or working on a design project, I find it to be a great source of inspiration (& a great place to compile ideas!). If you have yet to use it to plan parties, you might just find it to be a total gamechanger (like me!). Pin anything and everything to a dedicated board for your party and you’ll have everything in one place: ideas, products, inspiration images – you name it.
Another recommendation: Instagram boards. I recently started using Instagram boards and I’m hooked! The same concept as Pinterest, I save Instagram posts that inspire me to various boards. It’s so helpful!
For this party in particular, as the clock started ticking and it was time to get moving with decisions, I settled on a theme (or lack thereof!) and edited down my Pinterest Board.
We went with pink and blue again (just as we did for our baby shower). It was basically just a classic birthday party with lots of pink for her and lots of blue for him (if you want to call that a theme).
Things You May Want To Incorporate
As you compile ideas, I thought it might be helpful to share some of things you might want to incorporate that I discovered along the way…
FIRST BIRTHDAY PARTY SETS
First things first, I just have to mention first birthday party sets. A serious time saver!
If you want to make things really easy on yourself, a first birthday set is without a doubt the way to go. I’d recommend checking out Namesake Celebrations & Little Happies for complete sets. Their heirloom sets are absolutely adorable!
If you prefer to order items separately, both companies sell items individually so that’s not a problem. It’s super easy to piece things together as you’d like.
PARTY HATS, CROWNS & HIGHCHAIR BANNERS
We used these pink and blue musical mudpie party hats. There are a gazillion party hats to choose from. If you’re going with a specific theme, you’ll almost certainly be able to find one to coordinate. Otherwise, Mudpie, Namesake Celebrations and Little Happies are my top recommendations for highly quality, heirloom pieces. Amazon also has endless well priced options.
Want to do a crown instead? Check out 3 Marthas, Flower Lane and Heidi Rose. Monogram if you’d like and bring out year after year. Maybe we’ll switch things up next year and go with crowns next time around. They’re so darn cute!
You can also typically find coordinating highchair banners to match. Personally, since we have twins, we didn’t go the highchair banner route. Instead, I thought perhaps one banner above would be a better option to tie everything together. Then I remembered we had lots and lots of balloons left over from their baby shower. Decision made. We went with a balloon garland instead!
PARTY PENNANTS & WANDS
For a little extra pizazz, add a party pennant or wand. We incorporated these pink and blue Cami Monet party pennants. She makes them for all types of occasions: birthdays, holidays, first day of school, you name it. I’ll be able to bring them out year after year each birthday, which will be a fun tradition.
SMASH CAKES
We ordered our smash cake from our local grocery store, Harris Teeter. If you’re local to the area I highly recommend. They turned out so cute and the biggest perk of all: they were free! When we were placing our order the bakery associate informed us of the special offer.
Here’s the form you’ll need to fill out for your free cake. You need to turn it in at least two weeks in advance I believe for processing time.
If you aren’t local to the area, I’d definitely recommend checking with your local grocery store to see if they offer anything similar. You never know!
For the cakes designs we went very classic – white cakes with white icing. Brooks’ cake was filled with blue sprinkles, Madison’s with pink sprinkles and both were topped with multicolored sprinkles; a candle was placed on each cake and ta-da! all set to go. Treats for the guests came from Georgetown cupcake.
TABLE DECOR
Table decor will of course depend on your theme, but if you’re going with a “no theme” theme like we did, I came across this confetti dots first birthday party kit and it was just what I had in mind. It comes with matching cups, plates, napkins and cutlery. Since it had a little bit of blue and a little bit of pink, it did just the trick to pull things together.
A fun little side note about the party…
The weekend of the party also happened to be peak bloom in DC. My mom popped over to the local farmers market the day of and picked up a beautiful bouquet of pink cherry blossom stems to use for the centerpiece. So beautiful.
Our cherry blossom tree was blooming outside, the tree lined streets were looking gorgeous, it was such a pretty spring weekend and so festive and fitting for peak bloom 🌸. If you’ve never been to Old Town during peak bloom, trust me, a visit to the area will be worth your while.
OUTFIT IDEAS
If you want to do first birthday outfits, there are so many different ways you can go. A few favorite brands to checkout:
- Mini Boden currently makes really cute birthday applique t-shirts for ages 1-5. We received them as gifts!
- Cecil and Lou , Mudpie and The Bella Bean offer extensive birthday collections from casual to dressy to pajamas and more.
- If you’re looking for matching bloomers and bibs, I love all the Namesake Celebrations options.
- We went with these Bailey Boys outfits for him and her along with these coordinating bibs from 3 Marthas.
Shop First Birthday Party Recommendations
click the images below to directly shop each piece
Blue Musical Birthday Hat // Blue Birthday Boy Pennant // Pink Musical Birthday Hat
Birthday Bib (Blue & Pink) // Pink Birthday Girl Pennant
Birthday Boy Longall // Gold Dipped #1 Candle // Confetti Sprinkles // 4″ Mail Order Smash Cake
Birthday Girl Dress & Bloomer // First Birthday Table Setting Party Kit