Cost of Children's Parties
silversox
Posts: 5,204 Forum Member
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I'm looking in to the cost of running children's parties. Are there any mums out there who have arranged parties for their offspring and can tell me just how much they are prepared to pay for hire of a hall/large room, entertainment, food and drink, prezzies, balloons etc. Roughly how many children do you invite? 
Many thanks
Many thanks
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You would need to price it per head, and so do different packages too.
I would suggest joining Netmums for example and asking this question there as I'm sure you'll get loads of feedback.
Last time I did a party for my daughter at age 5 it cost £150 just for the entertainer and hall hire alone. Food on top of that we did ourselves to keep costs down, same with the party bags. So you'll have about £150 to start with and then have to price food and party bags per head and then work it out from there. Don't forget your insurance and CRB checks.
Good luck!
We had a party for our 2 year old a week or so ago.
Apparently though, I'm not allowed to answer your questions, as I'm a dad and not a mum.
Entertainer: £120
Food (home prepared): About £15
Goodies (pass the parcel, party bags): About £15
Cake/decorations: About £10
So £160 ish all in.
Previous years we have gone to a softplay and its been about about the same cost overall.
Sorry Huge, my little one has no clue what is going on and until he does I am not having a party
The reptile man sounds fab, I might hire him just for my own amusement.
If that was the sort of party that either of my kids would enjoy then I would pay around £8 a head for it, and I would give the birthday child a restriction of inviting 20 kids only.
That kind of party is easy to hold at home though plus its cheaper to do it at home and pay for a cleaner to come round and tidy up after you.
It would have to offering something spectacular for me to consider paying to host it elsewhere.
My daughter's 3rd birthday party earlier this year had around 28 kids running round our house and the outside space, lots of entertainment, lots of food and cost me no more than £40.
Next year she's getting a £400 party but it's a go-kart party which is something that she's incredibly passionate about so I don't mind spending out for it.
last time I looked childrens games such as pass the parcel, pin the tail on a donkey, and so forth were free to parents who are not unimaginative lazy sods who see a kids party as a chance to drink wine at lunch?
how did we ever win a freaking war?
How old is the child? There's a world of difference between a party for 2 year olds and for teenagers.
Parties have never been free.
Pass the parcel - £1 main prize, £1 wrapping paper for inner layers (newspaper for outer layers), plus sweets for in between layers, sellotape
Pin the tail on the donkey - Cost of large sheet of paper if you are creative, add on cost of printer ink if you can't draw yourself
Party food - even cheap sandwiches and squash cost monet
Cake - homemade simple cake with candles is at least £5
For the OP:
Hall hire tends to be between £30 and 360 round here, but depends on the area.
Entertainment - Party games and prizes allow £10, paid entertainment varies a lot from about £75 for an hour up to hundreds
Food - I tend to allow £2 per kid for decent party food. If you have the facilities cheap pizzas, oven chips and fishfingers/chicken nuggets etc go down well
Party bags - I allow £2 per bag
As for numbers, if you are running your own party, the more kids the cheaper it works out per head, but the more stressfull it is. One year we had 45 kids, never again!
Oh dear!! Sorry about that, Hugh! I did mean parents in general.
You don't have to apologise to me for not giving your son a birthday party!
My son DID have a clue what was going on and absolutely bloody loved it! As did the other kids who were there.
I'd far rather pay a little bit more for someone to basically do the lot, with us just providing the cake. Pre-done party bags alone would be worth paying for....they're a complete pain in the arse to sort out.
Last year's party in our other local softplay place, claimed to provide staff who'd run party games if we provided the prizes. So we spent the evening before the party wrapping pass the parcel things. Turned out to be a complete waste of time - the staff "running" the party were completely useless, they had no idea how to keep 10 4 year olds entertained, they didn't even seem to be too sure what pass the parcel was all about. If the OP can do that and the party bags, I reckon she's on to a winner.
ETA: We're looking at somewhere between 12 and 15 kids for this year's party, aged between 2 and 6, with one 11 year old.
Nice. Trust me, your kids did NOT enjoy those parties....
It's past time to do away with party bags! A couple of quids worth of plastic tat that's going to break within a couple of hours? Please, just save your money.
Have it at home if you have a big enough room. Children love playing games like ''what's The Time, Mr. Wolf?', Pass The Parcel', 'Blind Man's Buff'' and so on. Food doesn't cost much and they have a great time. Get a couple of other parents to help supervise and have a great time.
http://www.allaboutpartybags.co.uk/list/111/Prefilled_Party_Bags_and_Boxes.html
http://www.littletreasurespartybags.co.uk/
http://www.partybagworld.co.uk/tab/81/category/163/PreFilledPartyBags.aspx
http://www.thecuriouscaterpillar.co.uk/pre-filled-paper-party-bags.html
A quick google for 'filled party bags' and there are lots of options
I did look at some of them last year, and decided against it as I was just being lazy.
Edit: and probably a case of divvying up all the leftovers more than anything else
What a bizarre reply.