We'd been talking about her Sweet 16 for a long time. You'd have thought I'd be better prepared. But just like with everything else, the time just flew by and here we were a mere couple of months away. In case you too ever find yourself under the crunch to plan a party, we thought we'd share some pointers to save you some time.
The author was hosted to facilitate writing this article. All thoughts and opinions expressed are their own.
Sweet 16 celebrations come in all shapes and sizes these days. We had always envisioned some sort of hall with dinner and dancing. My daughter has a bunch of different friend groups, so it is really hard to include everyone to go see a show or do a special activity. We decided to stick with a more traditional party.
First and foremost, we had to pick a date. We were competing with homecoming dances, so we decided to have the party a couple of weeks prior to her actual birthday.
After the date, the most important factors are the venue, the entertainment, the food, and the guest list.
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The Venue
We chose to have our event at The Rooted Space. The Rooted Space houses two large, bright dance studios that they rent out for all sorts of special events. In fact, the event before ours was a pop-up roller rink! Both rooms have hard wood floors, one full wall of mirrors, and wall-to-wall windows on two remaining walls. They are great open spaces for you to customize with, (available for rent), tables, chairs, string lights, curtains, electric candles, and your own decorations.
Things to consider when choosing a party venue:
- Guest parking
- Can you bring in your own food and drink?
- Potential alcohol restrictions
- Potential decorating restrictions
- Do they have a kitchen or a place to keep food/drinks hot or cold?
- Where are the electrical outlets?
- Do they have a sound system?
- Do they have a projector and/or screen?
- Where will gifts go?
- Where will coats go?
- Will there be someone onsite for the entire party?
- What is expected of clean-up?
To answer some of these for The Rooted Space, street parking is plentiful, (though most of our guests were dropped off), you can bring in your own food and drink without restriction, a event coordinator was there the entire time, and in the Juniper Room there were cubbies that were perfect for storing gifts.
You can find additional venues options in our Local Party Venue and Entertainment Guide.
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The Entertainment
We originally thought we might just plug an iPhone into a speaker with a pre-programmed playlist, but thought it was too big of a risk. Instead we found Elevated Entertainment. We saw a friend had given a terrific testimonial on the Elevated Entertainment website and after meeting with the owner, Lorry, we knew the party would be in safe hands.
Things to consider when choosing a DJ:
- References!
- Will they take requests?
- Will they emcee?
- What party games/special dances/traditions do they usually incorporate?
- Do they have special lighting?
- Do they have their own table/set-up?
- How much time do they need to set-up?
To answer some of these for Elevated Entertainment, our DJ, Chris, did an amazing job. He did act as emcee and executed a grand entrance we weren't expecting. He did have special disco lights which really made the party. He took requests, even an obscure one from myself for a song by a local teen band. (Shout out to Neptune's Core!) The teens were on the dance floor the entire night!
You can find additional entertainment options in our Local Party Venue and Entertainment Guide.
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The Food
It is really hard to feed 50 people affordably and also satisfy everyone's dietary restrictions. We quickly realized that a taco bar would be the most fun, customizable, and reasonable. Tatas Tacos hit a homerun! We picked our proteins and Tatas Tacos brought in all the fixins: refried beans, rice, tortillas, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cilantro, salsa, sour creme, cheese, and tortilla chips. We also had a churros bar with chocolate sauce. To accomodate 50 people they cut the churros in half for us. Since we also had cake, and I knew not everyone would eat cake, we got a smaller cake and framed it with the churros. There was not a sugar crystal to be found after the kids got to them.
Things to consider when choosing a caterer:
- Will they deliver?
- How will food be kept warm/cold?
- Who will provide paperware/plasticware/serverware?
- Do you have a big enough food table?
We also got cake from Nothing Bundt Cake's new location in Andersonville. The great thing about Nothing Bundt Cake is that you can order Bundtinis®. Bundtinis® are individual sized cakes, sold by the dozen, in various flavors from red velvet to white chocolate raspberry. We preferred them to cupcakes as they are incredibly moist, don't crumble, and taste so good!
You can find additional food options in our Local Party Venue and Entertainment Guide.
The Guest List
Teens and many parents alike, want the invitations to go directly to the guest and not the parent. Teens also want to be real casual about it and just text their friends with the party specifics. We insisted on digital invitations (Punchbowl) and then input the text numbers of all the guests.
- Be prepared to remind, remind, remind to rsvp or have your child reach out directly.
- You don't have to give much time. Teens are so busy, they won't really know if they can go until 1-2 weeks before anyhow. Sending the invitations 3 weeks in advance should be fine. They probably won't ask their parents for a ride until the night before
Decorations
While our venue had pretty string lights and our DJ had great party lights too, we didn't really need many decorations, but the supplies we did need included:
- Tableclothes
- Paperware/plasticware
and then we added:
- A couple of banners for photo ops
- Sweet 16 photo props
- Electric tealights for the tables
- Balloons
- We had helium balloons for the ceiling (which we bought a large helium tank for)
- We had non-helium balloons for the floor (which we bought an electric air pump for - priceless)
- TEMU sold balloon lights. These were a really nice touch!
- Favors
- We had inflatable flamingo drink holders that acted as both favor, decor, and helped guests keep track of their drinks.
- We put little thank you stickers on them.
Most decorations were purchased from TEMU, which I was very pleased by. The helium tank was purchased from Target.
We also brought in our own projector and screen to play a slideshow in the background with pictures from the past 16 years.
Lessons Learned
- Give yourself at least two hours to set-up at the venue on the day of.
- We gave ourselves only one hour. That was lunacy! And we got stuck in Cubs traffic, so that shrank it down to only 40 minutes.
- Don't forget the things that always get forgotten:
- Matches
- Cake candles
- Wine Opener
- Tape
- Scissors
- Speech
- DIY helium balloons don't last that long (~4 hrs max)
- We tried to blow some up at home and bring them with us to save on prep time, but they were out of helium by the time we arrived.
- Also balloons with confetti in them are difficult to use with a helium tank and last even less time.
- You can however blow up non-helium in advance and bring them in a large garbage bag.
- For balloons with confetti in them, you are supposed to run the balloon on cloth to create static and spread the confetti around.
- Reconsider slide shows.
- I worked really hard on the slide show. (mostly because our photos hadn't been organized in decades), and it was truly a labor of love. I am so happy to have it for ourselves, and some people did watch it and appreciated it, but for the most part - if the DJ is doing a good job, and ours was, everyone will be too busy dancing. I thought there might be some wall flowers that would need the escape, but there weren't. So it depends on your audience and the structure of your party. Perhaps it would be more fitting for a sit down dinner. Just offering my own experience as something to consider.
- Make sure you have a table large enough for all the food plus plates and cutlery.
- Do not throw away lids to food containers so you can take home or give away leftovers easily.
- Plan on an after party at home with the leftovers!
- The guest of honor may not eat at the party, (that is probably a good sign), but they may be famished after.
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In the end, was the party flawless? Of course not. I didn't get as many balloons in the air as I had planned, I couldn't get the slide show to project as large as it should have and it kept stopping, and most guests "forgot" their favor. All little details that no one but me cared about. What really mattered: the venue, the entertainment, the food, and the guest list were absolutely perfect.
My daughter and her friends had the time of their lives. And that is a dream come true!
Here's an easy checklist you can use to help plan your next party.
