It’s that time: one of the most important people in your life is turning another year older and you want to give them a surprise party! (Because that’s just how great you are). But here’s the catch, you have no money. This surprise may have to double up as the present because you can’t afford it all by yourself. So here is how to throw a surprise party for under £50 that everyone will love and be talking about for years to come.
Whatever you do, think about whether or not you can DIY any of the decorations or food and whether you have anything that you can use already. A great idea is to do a ‘kids theme’ with bunting, caterpillar cake, party games, jelly and ice cream and other childhood favourites. Another idea is TV characters or film characters from their favourite movie, for example, if they love Harry Potter, you know what theme you should have. A bonus for this is that you don’t need to stress about alcohol as it doesn’t fit the theme which will save you loads.
As I said in the previous point, alcohol can be one of the most expensive parts of a party. A bottle of liquor can easily be £20, meaning that if you want to buy it for a gathering that’s basically your whole budget gone. The best thing is to tell people to ‘bring your own booze’ (BYOB) and they can bring what they want to drink. Not only does this slim down the chances of everyone getting sloppy drunk and leaving you as a babysitter but it saves you a small fortune.
I’ll be the first to say it: bakeries that do birthday cakes are majorly overcharging for something pretty easy to do. Buy some eggs, butter, flour and sugar and make your own for about £3 that will have love baked in, not just money. If you’re unsure about how to bake a cake, YouTube is your best friend and so is your grandma who baked all of your birthday cakes for the past 20-something years.
Because why should you have to pay for all of it? Assign a dish for everyone to bring (pizza, salad or whatever you want). Or a decoration or task. Get your musical friend to make a playlist, your social friend to make sure the guest of honour actually gets there and the foodie to choose what food to have. Use your friends and contacts all that you can! Make sure you use the guest’s friends too, remember that this party is for them and not for you and so you need to invite the people that are important to them.
Why would you need to hire somewhere? Even if you’re in a flatshare or something that means you can’t host at your place, you must know someone who has a place which saves so so much money. Why spend hundreds on a restaurant or function room when you can do it at your house, save money and save restrictions on time, food, drink and music. The bonus is also that people who have to travel far can just crash where they sit which means that they also save money on accommodation.
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