I am not sure how many child-birthday-party posts I can expect the average person to be interested in, but it is a Major Topic at our house right now, so here is another one.
Elizabeth distributed her invitations on Friday, and a girl in her class (Elizabeth invited all the girls in her class) said, “Uh oh, we have a problem: that’s when MY birthday party is!” Elizabeth came home with this information, and we sat in silence for a moment, letting that sink in. I asked her a series of questions she didn’t have answers to, such as whether Emma was inviting all the girls in the class, and whether Emma’s invitations had been distributed yet. Elizabeth THINKS not to the latter, because she thinks she would be invited, and also because none of the other girls said “Oh, I can’t go to your party because I’m going to Emma’s,” and also because Emma didn’t say/indicate she had—but none of this is conclusive.
We concluded that there is no action for us to take at this point, except to wait in readiness. If we had not yet sent out invitations, and had received one from Emma for the same day we were planning ours, we would have changed our party day. That may or may not be possible for Emma’s parents, depending on what kind of party is planned, and whether reservations have been made, and whether it’s scheduled for a weekend out-of-town relatives will be visiting, or WHATEVER. We don’t have Emma’s parents’ contact info, or else I might email them and see what could be arranged; but they DO have OUR contact information, assuming Emma gave them the invitation. So they can change their party day, or they can contact us, or they can go ahead an issue their invitations for the same day, but in ANY case it’s their move not ours.
Another problem is that Edward also distributed HIS invitations on Friday, for the weekend BEFORE Elizabeth’s party (their actual birthday is between the two weekends). So as of the day before yesterday, if we’d found out about Emma’s party, we could easily have swapped Edward and Elizabeth’s parties. But as of the day we learned about Emma’s party, we would need to reschedule TWO parties, with TWO batches of guests to contact.
Well, again, we concluded there isn’t ANYTHING we can do at this point. Our role is to wait. My guess is that Emma’s invitations have NOT yet gone out, so we can also, if we like, feel happy and grateful that we sent ours out when we did.
Also, I’m so glad we don’t do this every year.
I am SO GLAD you post about these things so I am aware in advance (WELL in advance). Anxiously and hopefully waiting for news that Emma has changed the date of her party.
1) Apparently, I am interested in unlimited “child-birthday-party posts” b/c I’ve been reading all your posts and all the comments despite the fact that I have no children of my own. :-) I was, however, a Christmas birthday, so I am familiar with the challenges involved in getting friends to show up at a birthday party.
2) Admittedly I don’t remember much from life as a nine-soon-to-be-ten-year-old girl, but could “Elizabeth” possibly ask Emma (or “Emma”) for more details or at least for a parent’s contact info? It seems like this would be something best discussed with the parallel party planner. Maybe you could even combine forces and cut the work in half!
For future reference, although saying this might reveal when the party is, so maybe the crowd could answer, anyway, how far in advance are invitations issued? A month? Two weeks? Six weeks? And also, I wonder how far in advance the kids places that do parties book up in different areas of the country. And I suppose depending on time of year. Oh all of this is so interesting and a bit, well, scary.
I live in a pretty urban area (SoCal), and I’d say three weeks in advance is the norm for elementary school birthday parties. It’s sometimes a month, sometimes two weeks. It is also extremely common to contact the “core” group of moms (so my dd’s three closest friends) and clear the date/time with them before sending out invites/booking the place.
We seem to receive most invitations in the 2-3-weeks-before-the-party range. Occasionally we get a 1-week or 4-week one. I don’t think we’ve gotten any that were more than a month in advance.
A week or two of notice is standard in our area. More if a venue has to be booked significantly in advance. We’re planning a party for our son on June 6th, for instance, and are planning on sending invitations/contacting parent this week.
I do two weeks, and I’d say most are in the 2-3 week range. We once got one for the night before the party! I thought maybe we were just a last-minute invite, but I talked to some other moms and it seems like all the invitations went out the night before.
How wonderful that you’d be willing to adjust your party!
Once upon a time, my daughter and several of her friends were invited to a tea party at a home from 1:30-3:30. Then half the party (including the birthday girl) was invited to my daughter’s BFF’s party the exact same day from 12-2 at a very nearby art school. (the BFF was obviously not invited to the tea party, which was ok, it was a smaller guest list as house parties tend to be) All evites, everyone could see who was invited to both parties.
We waited for a week for the tea party mom to announce that it would be ok that it would be ok to sort of tweak the party time. If I had received the BFF’s party invite first, I would have been able to ask the tea party mom, but you can’t RSVP and then later announce you’ll be late, right? Oh the drama.
We send out party invites about 2.5 weeks out, although I would go as early as a month, in part bc one of my kids has a May birthday (which is school carnival season, as well as sports and dance and memorial day and occasionally late Easter issues) and was in a school where there were about ten girls with birthdays in a six week period.
I had a similar situation this very day! I sent out invites to my son’s 8th birthday at a bowling alley. He invited four neighborhood friends and 4 school friends since the party package was for 9 kids. A few days later he got invited to a classmate’s party for the same day. The times overlapped a little- ours was 1-2:30 and the other one was 2-5. Of course the classmate wasn’t invited to my son’s party so that was a little awkward. But, luckily none of the other kids were invited to both parties, so it worked out. My son had his party today, then went an hour late to the other party. But if they had both been for the whole class it would have been tough!
I have friends with older kids who sometimes have two classmate parties in a weekend. I’m anxiously waiting to see if this ends up normal as my kids get older.
And on the topic of advance notice – we try to send out invitations a full month in advance. I feel like people are super busy, plus my older son’s birthday is January 15 and I don’t want him to get skipped / forgotten in the bustle of the holidays. My cousins all are awful about texting me and saying “Oh, hey, so-and-so’s party is tomorrow adternoon…can you come?” The answer is usually no and I don’t even feel bad about it anymore :P
Holeeee crap. I did not see this coming! Of all the things I thought about E’s party, this one not one of them! My oldest daughter has a friend who is born on 5/12 and my second daughter is born on 5/14 and only two years into grade school and both damned parties have been on the same day! But I have fought it by having our party early early in the day, like 11-1 or my kids even went to a party from 10-11;30! So maybe that would help? If would be a lot of partying for the school set, but what the heck? If parties are only 2 hours long maybe they could fit in one day.
I am finding all of this completely riveting , partially due to having two girls and partially due to I love dramas that in the end are not earth shattering, but only caused me undue anguish. Thank you for taking us along on the ride, I do hope you will tell us in the end everything was just fine.
I think you are right. Your role is to wait. Hopefully, Emma’s parents are currently figuring out if they can shift the day/time of Emma’s party and adjusting the invitations appropriately.
In elementary school, my son had a good friend whose birthday was within days of his. It got so that I always got in touch with the friend’s mom before finalizing party plans to make sure we weren’t overlapping. (But this was a friend he always invited, even when it was a “pick 2-3 friends” kind of party,” so it was easy to couch the question as “B wants to be sure A can come to his party and I know A’s birthday is around the same time. Does xx-yy on zz work for you?”)
If you sent your invitations out first, I think you’ve pretty much called dibs on the party time. I agree – it’s up to the other kid’s parents to figure out the next move.
So I’m kind of late to the party (har har) but I was in this EXACT situation once. Basically, I was organizing a birthday party for a child and their friend from school had his party on the same day. The key here is that they were at different times. As long as you’ve got an hour plus buffer between the parties you’ll be fine. It was actually an okay situation as both birthday children were invited to each other’s parties and all kids involved liked having the extra long “party day”. There wasn’t any mean comparing or teasing.
I agree that your role is just to wait.
Any updates on this? I’m really curious to hear how it all panned out!
We had this happen this year. We bumped our son’s party to a week earlier. The other child’s party *never* happened. Do not switch and DO hope for the best.
I know this is late but I’m freaking out right now. So yesterday I got invited to my best friend’s valentines day party on the 12th of January. Its from 6:30-9:30. But my moms birthday is the same day. What do i do??