My littlest daughter is turning five in a few weeks and for me this feels like a milestone birthday! She has been talking about her October birthday for a couple of months, laying out all the details for me and making sure I know exactly what she wants. She decided on an Alice in Wonderland birthday, which I thought sounded like a lot of fun, so we’ve been busily taking notes and sketching out ideas for a while.
One of the hardest parts about throwing a kids birthday party is the fact that kids are fickle. They may looooove something today, but totally loooove something else tomorrow. When we first started talking about her birthday my daughter said she wanted a Angelina Ballerina tea party. I knew that this would probably change, so I came up with a list of all the ways we could do a tea party birthday. Once she saw all the different options, she quickly decided that Alice in Wonderland was the one she wanted.
My youngest is a girly girl. Purple and pink clothes everyday, and if you think she’s going to wear a pair of jeans you have another think coming. I knew that no matter which theme we went with it needed to have an overarching girly theme. I found some beautiful floral paper at the craft store, full of pinks and knew that it was going to be perfect.
Creating your Invitation
For our Alice in Wonderland tea party I started with a black invitation with a white border. Because Wonderland is a fantastical venue (you have to go down the rabbit hole to get there) I thought the dark background fit. Think about your theme and choose a backdrop that fits with that.
I chose two distinct fonts for our invitation, a plain serif for the basics and pertinent details and a flourish for the theme. I also borrowed some lines from the movie so that there would be no confusion about what we were doing. Starting off with “please don’t be late, for a very important date” is a direct tie-in to Alice in Wonderland. The same is true for the “down the rabbit hole” and “very merry unbirthday” references.
Choosing the right paper for the job is super tricky. Too flimsy and they get ruined, too hard and they don’t feed through the printer. I choose to go with a sturdy card stock for our invitations. I know that little hands were going to be touching these and I didn’t want something that would rip or crinkle easily. I also knew that I didn’t want to be hand cutting each of the invitations once they were printed. Luckily these perforated postcards made it easy for me to separate my invitations and get them ready to go!
