My 17th Birthday Party

19.9.21 - A few images from the day including costumes from Grace and me.

The past few weeks have been rather hectic. I could say that starting Sixth Form was more difficult than expected, but that would be a lie. I knew it would be this intense, yet it is still just as hard to manage. However, that is not the focal point of this post as I will be discussing something much more light-hearted, my birthday. More specifically, I will be outlining the process of planning my party and giving my recommendations of different party activities.

The reason I decided to host a party was that I wanted to have a memorable 17th birthday. I am not saying that my other birthday celebrations have been unmemorable but the pandemic has meant that the past couple of years have been slightly underwhelming. Having come up with this idea, I messaged my friend and pretty soon our plans were underway. We created a Google Jamboard to document our ideas and keep track of our progress.

The first area that we looked into was decorations. Before doing this, we decided that a Hollywood Theme would be a great idea, so the decorations followed this style. The colours we decided upon were black and gold. By using this colour palette we added balloons, bunting, hanging tinsel and some other items to the Jamboard. Another idea that we had was to use a polaroid camera to act as paparazzi to take photos throughout the day, but this did not happen because firstly, we did not have enough blank polaroids and also, I wanted to enjoy the day and not on doing this. I then totalled the prices for every item, which meant we moved on to the next page.

The next page happened to involve food. We planned for lunch, snacks, dinner and drinks. I will not go into too much detail as to not bore you.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I created a mind map in which I used to plan my Wolverine costume. My hair, outfit and accessories were amongst the items that I consequently bought (excluding the hair which I already have on my head). However, in the end, I was forced to use my natural hairstyle as my hair was too short for the style I intended to recreate. Additionally, the search for a white vest turned out to be much more difficult than I expected; it took me four weeks to find it. But in the end, I was content with the outcome of my costume, which is displayed in the image above.

Once the decorations, the food and my costume arrived, it was time for the party.

Two hours before the party commencing, my friend Josie arrived to help me set up. We hung up the bunting, gold foil and balloons and organised the food and drinks, which may seem like a rather laborious task. But we made the most of it (mainly due to my dog wanting to pop every balloon as we blew them up). The major challenge we faced was having the helium tank run out of helium after the first balloon. This meant that we had to inflate the confetti balloons manually, creating a tornado of gold confetti inside each one. The difficulty with this was trying to not inhale any confetti, which we luckily did not.

With everything ready, the party commenced. As with every social gathering, the first few minutes are somewhat awkward, especially if some people have never met each other before. But, we used a game of Uno to “break the ice” and from then on, we all had a great time. We played board games and video games and spoke about absolutely everything. It was amazing.

The board games and video games that we played included:

• Quiplash.

• Trivial Murder Party.

• Papa's Quiz.

• Faker.

• Shout.

• Last word.

• Uno.
  

We intended to play beer pong (without the beer), however, the rain became torrential, so this idea had to be scrapped.

In summary, I had a great time at my party. It was fun to have everyone in costume; I felt this allowed everyone to feel relaxed and comfortable. Additionally, the seven hours it lasted flew by rapidly, proving what a great time I, and hopefully everyone else, had. As with every post so far, I would like to finish with my advice. When planning a party or gathering, use your ideas and feel free to set boundaries because this will allow you to enjoy it more yourself.