21st Party

hihi! :) i had so much fun preparing for my birthday, and just wanna share with you what i did for it! and BIG THANKS to all those who helped me in one way or another :) <3

okie, maybe i'll start from how i started planning my party. (I LOVE PLANNING EVENTS BTW!!! from helping to organize so many events, this is the first time i actually really started planning the entire thing from scratch, and actually carrying it out) #shagttm, but really fun :) i enjoyed the planning and preparing a lot :) haha

so anyway, once i confirmed the date and venue (i took forever just to decide these basics, and before this was done, i couldnt actually begin any preparations, although i had already come up with my theme :D), i could start ordering the stuff i needed. luckily i had pretty much already done my research before that, so it wasn't too difficult. oh oh, my theme was FLEURS DE PARIS :))) haha i think it just sounds so nice :D anyway, it's french for 'flowers of paris', so my theme revolved around both flowers and paris (of course right..). everyone was supposed to come dressed in flowers! i'm glad to say that i think almost all the girls did! :D yayyyy :) guys were disappointing -.- only scott came in a flower shirt! haha my awesome bro who was so supportive (:

okay on to the deco & food etc! :D

guestbook for my party was done entirely by my sis! super duper pretty :D i remember i was squealing at every page when she showed it to me. bought materials mostly from papermarket, and also other random places like spotlight, daiso & popular bookstore, to create the guestbook :)

i ordered balloons from this shop at rochor centre called Yeo GM Trading. can check out their website here. this was quite reasonably priced since i wanted to get helium balloons, which are usually >$1 each! they have different packages, and the one i got included 60 helium balloons (you can choose the colours) + a balloon bouquet (two pattern balloons + 5 normal helium balloons) for $80, which is really quite affordable! and it includes transportation too! i got pink and gold balloons (i realised my whole theme ended up being really pink haha but i loved it!) to suit my theme :)

the most tedious part of my birthday prep was probably doing this backdrop for my photo area. oh i bought an eiffel tower  wall sticker (you can probably see it in my previous birthday post with all the pics) from a small shop at junction 8 for $16 to bring out the 'paris' side of my theme. anyway, back to the backdrop. i totally did SO MUCH research to finally get the materials for this! went around to daiso, spotlight and artfriend to check out prices and the resources i needed for this. i bought the corkboard from artfriend (i think it was around $16-$18) for this size, which was the largest (and MEGA HEAVY esp since i had to carry it around for so long... -.-). flowers were from daiso, cos they were cheap. end up i bought way more than enough flowers (i got those flower wreaths and cut them up to get the loose flowers), and since there were excess flowers, i cut up the petals to make them look like rose petals and scattered them around haha. and i spent forever deciding how to do the letters. initially i was thinking of getting wooden/styrofoam letters, but decided against it cos they were so ridiculously expensive D: end up i had to do paper mache all on my own!!! :O a completely lack-of-artistic/creative-talent had to do this :/ haha i swear i had to do so many things which i would hate to do, just for this board. OCD-me had to touch glue!!!! and smear it all over the alphabets to get the glitter effect. yucks. haha anyway, how i did the letters was paper mache, spray on black paint, and smear glue and glitter on it. big thanks to my two sisters and sam who were chionging it with me the night before my party :)

for door gifts, i decided to give out polaroids with a little thankyou sticker on it :) i designed the sticker using iWork Pages (you can use MS word or any other software really). and i printed it at this shop called Ben Quick at Sunshine Plaza #01-08/63. it was just $2 for an A4 page! :) super affordable. and really fast, you can collect it on the spot. all good, except that the stupid auntie cheated me cos she printed on some art card at first, when i told her i wanted a sticker -.- wth. and she made me pay for it. haiz, at least i complained and she let me split half with her, so it was just $1 but still -.- damn retarded.

AAAAAAAAND, being a gourmie, of course the food at my party had to be awesome! :D hehe. this was the best part of my party really! it was the highlight, and the most fun part of my preparation :D as in the research part. haha i didnt do any of this :P but i had awesome people to do it for me! :)

i can't believe no one took pictures of my buffet??!!??!! okay fine, it didnt look as nice as my dessert bar (look above, aren't you just drooling already? :D), but i think it was tasty! :) after checking out LOTS of caterers out there, i decided on Four Seasons, which is affordable, and the quality is good! i got their $8/pax tea reception, minimum number of pax is 40, and it includes 8 dishes + 1 drink. what i liked about four seasons is that they have a lot of dishes for you to choose from, and there are no restrictions on the number of carbo dishes you want to have. so i could order two types of main courses (yang chow fried fried rice and sin chow bee hoon), assorted sandwiches, chicken franks w BBQ sauce, scallop nuggets, fried honey prawn dumpling, sambal fish ball and honey glazed drumlet. for drinks i ordered lemon tea. because my venue was actually not supposed to have a party (oops :P this is why i can't tell you where i held it), i requested for entirely disposable containers and no table setup, as well as packet drinks (instead of the dispenser, and the metal trays with warmers). thankfully, the caterer acceded to my request so it was all good :)

for my beautiful dessert bar, it was super big thanks to Super Desserts Market!!!! :) my dessert bar was more expensive than my buffet dinner, but it was totally worth it. almost everything was polished off! i negotiated for $400 for 30pax, and this included 5 desserts: mini macarons, mini cupcakes, mini cheesecakes, decorated cookies and marshmallow pops. the price of the dessert bar includes delivery, setup and collection, and also customization to suit the theme! :) really big thanks to fiona & her team who were so sweet in doing all this :D it was super duper pretty! check out the eiffel tower cookies and the little sign they did for the dessert bar. loved all the pretty stands and everything!

apparently SDM is going to be shifting their operations though :( so not sure whether they'll be doing this anymore! instead, they have progressed into a new cafe initiative, Cups N Canvas (139 Selegie Road), so do check them out there! :)

and for the icing to top it off, my gorgeous birthday cake! :D it looked so beautiful amidst my dessert bar! :) unfortunately by then half the desserts were gone (quite annoyed about that - it was because the cake people took FOREVER to deliver my cake such i was panicking halfway through my birthday party wondering whether the cake would arrive or not! i was trying to save the cupcake tower just in case i didnt have a birthday cake, then i would have to use the cupcakes as my cake >.< i was so worried!!!), but the cake was still nice anyway! i negotiated for quite a long time with them, and finally settled on a price of $350 for a three-layer cake (with the top two layers being real cake and the bottommost layer is fake). they have quite a number of flavours of cake to choose from! and i could get diff flavours for the different tiers :D so it was chocolate brownie for the top and dark chocolate ganache for the second layer. YUMMMMMMMMMY :D i'm so glad that my cake tasted as good as it looked! :) oh yeah! i forgot the most important part - haha it's from Haus of Patisserie! :) i think this was probably one of the most affordable of the customized cakes i checked out. the lady was really patient at answering all my enquiries at the start, which was good! haha i think i really had quite a lot of things to check out, and it was nice that she replied quite promptly with all the info/advice i required. unfortunately, after i made my deposit, the service went WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY downhill from there! they totally didnt acknowledge my payment, and i had to ask them a couple of times before they finally replied me. and subsequent emails after that went unanswered. on the day of my party, they were SUPER late and uncontactable, which totally made me panic :( hmph. i dunno whether i'll ever go back to them (not that i need another customized cake anytime soon haha!) but i guess at least i got a nice cake.

okie this is such a long and wordy post! haha but hope it was useful and you had fun reading it! till my next event... :D