Birthday parties

Acem9 · 14-09-2025 08:30AM #1

My daughter just started junior infants and her birthday is next month. She really wants a play centre party, and there’s only one local to us but it’s €20 per child, which is working out at over €500 for just 2 hours 🫠 I’m a single parent so that kind of cost feels steep. We live quite far from town so having it at home wouldn’t really be fair on families who don’t drive. I’m not sure what the norm is do you invite the whole class at this age? I haven’t really mixed with other parents yet either, and I’m definitely the youngest parent in the class so I feel a bit out of place. Any advice would be so appreciated what’s reasonable to do, or any other ideas I might not have thought of?

racersedge · 14-09-2025 02:58PM

good lot of schools now insist if they are to give out invitations, it’s a case of inviting the whole class. Seems to be the going trend in it now. It’s either that, or as is the case in my own little one school, they just don’t hand them out at all. It’s even something that I’ve seen in the crèches as well.

Probably a bit early in the year to have developed any kind of relationship with any of the parents your child is close to - only thing I would think is if there is any activities that kids form the class are they play with. More of a chance of trying to get some sort of relationship built and contact details that way.

TheBody · 14-09-2025 03:05PM

In the primary school my kids attend, the boys invite all the boys in the class and the girls invite all the girls.

What normally happens is the respective mother creates a WhatsApp group and just sends the invite there.

enfant terrible · 14-09-2025 03:25PM

In my kids class usually all the class is invited and each parent puts 20 euro in a card to cover the costs.

jackboy · 14-09-2025 03:33PM

There is bound to be another birthday in the class the same month. Find out and suggest doubling up. That will half the cost.

witchgirl26 · 16-09-2025 03:07PM

My son is in 1st class now but it's always all the class are invited to the parties (boys & girls), as to be fair, a lot of his friends are the girls so would be weird to invite just the boys to me.

In Junior infants we all sucked it up & there was a party per child. It was pricey. Senior infants, we started talking on the whatsapp we'd set up & it became 1 party for 3-4 kids who had birthdays around the same time. My son shared his with 3 others & it was great! Might be worth reaching out to any of the parents & seeing if there is someone in the class who has a birthday around the same time as your daughter & would want to go together for a party.

The one rule we have is no additional people to the class - so some of my sons friends are from his old creche & we just did a small thing in the house for them a different time.

paulpd · 16-09-2025 03:36PM

My lads class picked the guys who's birthdays were close. Normally 3 or 4 per month so they had a joint party for the rest of the class. Made the play centre E100 each rather than E400! Out of the way then for another year.

Sarn · 04-11-2025 10:10PM

A bit late now, but in our school there is a shared party for everyone with a birthday in the same month, with everyone invited. The cost is then split among those parents (e.g. last month there was a party for seven of them). A fiver in a card for each child is the gift. One party a month divides the cost and frees up weekends!

Birthday parties

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