Wanting To Have : My Little Boy's First Birthday Party

As promised I am going to write all the things I can recall on Yanis' First Birthday party. This is a very late post but it's worth to tell since every child's first birthday is the most significant of all.

Every parents goal is to make that 12th month possible with no underlying problems of health. It's very critical to a child's life especially ours because he is a preemie. I always remember what the doctor had told us at the hospital and specifically informed us that our baby is special in a way late preterm babies should not be treated ordinarily. So every month from that time on we try to document in photos and videos our baby's development. As of this day, with God's grace Yanis only did one hospital visit when he was 4 days old and at the 11 month he did got a flu and cough from our vacation when we were out of the country. We as a parent did a good job I should say. I am proud of that and I will continue to work on something for my baby so he could be a good person when he grow up.

So when I planned about what theme I like for his birthday. I randomly searched famous Disney movies and I had eyed on minion. I told the husband and he said well it's an option so I was kind of hesitant to do that in the end. We later decided Little Baby Bum theme. They are just very recent and not many know their existence but it's the only nursery companies that Yanis loved. He started listening to LLB( in short ) very early on maybe 6 months or less. That time, the song captured his attention and he smiled every time it was played on or I would sing was the Five Little Speckled Frog and then at a later part he loved Hickory Dickory Dock where the mouse ran up the clock. In the kitchen I always played him the companies nursery songs and he loved it.

Now I have the theme planned, I need a vendor in the Philippines that I can work on so I could put up a backdrop that I need to the party. I searched LLB song lists and what captured me was to get the Row row your boat part 1 scheme where cupcakes, pretzels and lollipops where in the background. It will be a perfect backdrop and I used that concept in making the invitations and I used a few characters from their abundance of lists.

I worked for days to get everything in place and send it to all my family and friends via social media. I did all the prep 2 months in advance. I think I did good in this one and the prints were really eye catching ( I made a dozen for those older crowd that don't use the internet ). The distance was hard and the only way to get the invitation on schedule was through social media which most of the people I know used it very well and always up to date with what's new. It was very effective in the sense and I got all the response I needed in time.

The venue was difficult because I had only few place to choose from. There were a lot of venues out there but getting the right people to talked to was hard when dealing internationally. Hotel places are good but it's way out of my budget though I found a good one but I wasn't able to get the time I want so I choose a venue where everyone knows it. The place is very convenient and the food is good. A friend of mine helped me reserved it and transacted all down payments via money transfer electronically.

I searched Cebu artists and party coordinator in Facebook and also friends recommendation helped to to booked the party decor, cake, hosts, photographer and videographer so easily using FB. The small details like the party favor, piñata, and tokens where all done in Cebu with the help of my sister in law. To sum it up, I did it all without using my husbands energy. But with good help from a few people it was possible.

I got this idea from the Happy Birthday Song - Little Baby Bum. My cake artists did a good job.

The cake dessert buffet was amazing. Don't you think so! I didn't conceptualize this. The cake decorator did all this. What I just asked to get the cake right and she did and she made cupcakes, lollipops and other sweet treats. The cake was moist and delicious.

Ain't that nice? It's perfect love the combination. Though I wish the rainbow color scheme was used. But still they did a good job working on the characters and designs that I told them to do.