Featured Client- Pretty in Pink 1st Birthday Party Theme

Thank you Colleen for sharing your beautiful party with all of us!
I’m so happy I could be a part of the fun details!


“So, I’ll admit that I’m one of “those” moms who started planning (or envisioning) my daughter, Chloe’s, first birthday party when she was about 2 months old. I was introduced to a few party planning sites and blogs by friends with children and fell in love with the beautifully detailed parties that were featured. By no means do I think that I’ve achieved that level in party planning, but I loved the process of planning her first one. 

The trickiest part by far was finding just the “right” theme. I love all things glitzy and girlie and toyed with the idea of a princess, cupcake, sweet shoppe or ballerina theme, but I felt that those would be more appropriate when she’s a little bit older and actually enjoys things like princesses or ballerinas. I settled on “Pretty in Pink” as a way to do all things pink, frilly and girlie, without limits.

Because I work as middle school teacher and have a daily commute of an hour to and from work, time is certainly limited. I saved pictures of things I loved for a few months and when she was 6 months old I started listing out what I actually wanted to do for her party, and set myself little time lines for each project. I’m so glad I did that because with time on my side, the help of my sister, mom and some Etsy favorites I was able to accomplish many of the projects I had set out to.

One of my favorite parts of the party were the backdrop of pink and white, “ruffled streamers”. I saw a picture of these on a party site and fell in love, but when I read that they required sewing I knew I was in over my head. Luckily after a little bit of pleading I convinced my sister, a fashion major, to sew them for me. She offered up her talents for more projects and I was able to get the custom table cloth and “1” party hat out of her. She did a beautiful job with all of them.

The cupcake tower was something I really wanted to showcase and loved the idea of incorporating tutus (one of my favorite little girl items). I found a tutorial on YouTube and spent a Saturday morning making two of those to tie around my 4 tiered cupcake stands. As a bonus, I had a couple super cute tutus after the party! I also created the tulle rhinestone and pearl cupcake toppers using a 2” and a 1.5” punch. Adding to my dessert table was Chloe’s whimsical “smash cake”, created by Alpine Bakery in Concord, CA, old fashioned pink candy jars from Potterybarn Kids and ribbon cotton candy cones that I made out of different shades of pink card stock and pink ribbon.

I wanted as much pink and sparkle around the house as I could get so I started off trying to create pink, glittery garland to hang. When that didn’t come out so well I discovered that Martha Stewart had beat me to it and ordered 32 feet worth of her pink sparkle garland, which I then cut into strips and hung from the ceiling around my living room, above her birthday banner and from the light fixtures in the house. Because her birthday is in January, and the weather was so unpredictable, I knew that I needed to have something for the 10 kiddos under the age of 5 that were there, so I set up a craft table for the kids to make their Mommy and Daddys Valentine’s Day cards. Each kid had a lollipop labeled with their name to designate their “spot” at the table.

I’m all about personalized touches so her party was a little “Chloe” crazy. After working with Natalie from theprettypaperie for Chloe’s baptism party last August, I knew that I needed to utilize her again! She created beautiful water bottle labels that said both, “Happy Birthday Chloe” and had the number “1”. I can’t tell you how many compliments I received on them. She also created custom Thank You tags for the “1” cookie favors (made by my mom to match the “1” on her invitation) that were handed out at the end of the party, and lucky for me, I was able to reuse the custom tent cards that I ordered from her for Chloe’s baptism as food labels. Another Etsy favorite that I used was her adorable custom, pink cupcake pinata that had her name across it from MommyDo. The custom welcome door sign was created by Etsy seller 10candles. And last but not least, the beautiful birthday girl was in probably the cutest birthday outfit I’ve ever seen by Etsy seller ilovefancyschmancy.

I was lucky enough to be able to hire a professional photographer to document the day and relieve me of any photo taking responsibilities. Shea, atwww.shealynnphotography.com did a beautiful job capturing the day and many special moments. After 6 months of planning this party the completion of it was bittersweet, but, cue the eye-rolling from my husband, I have already started my folder of ideas for birthday party number 2…”