Ziv's birthday party: the deets!

More than a month has passed since Ziv celebrated his first birthday and I realized I haven't done a post about it yet! So here goes.

Ziv's lolo daddy took care of the catering and the entire setup so all ze hubby and I only had to handle were the invitations, balloons and cake. I started a Pinterest board a few months back and after collecting inspiration from all over the web, I've decided on an UP-inspired, balloon-themed party. We love the movie and Ziv loves balloons!

Back in January, I asked my Photoshop master brother Miko to draft an invitation design for me. I wanted bunches of balloons in the sky. The initial design he gave me had that but after two or three revisions and several days of thinking, I ended up with this design, which we distributed to our guests:

After that was settled, I picked a cake design. I had these as pegs:

And here was what we had on the party:

Cake by Gem See, same lady who made our wedding cake

The cake was delicious! The top layer was vanilla while the bottom layer was in chocolate. We chose to have boiled icing instead of fondant since it was cheaper. The only problem was the balloons almost fell off during transport because the icing couldn't hold'em!

No party is complete without balloons! I have exchanged e-mails with my high school classmate turned businesswoman Dang regarding balloon decor possibilities. She had lots of great ideas but we just didn't have the budget so I ended up just getting about two dozen helium balloons from her. They were in metallic rainbow colors and were so vibrant!

At first I thought two dozen balloons wouldn't be enough, but on the day itself I was pleasantly surprised that the caterer put a balloon centerpiece, albeit a simple one, on the tables. Had my dad told me there would be centerpieces, I wouldn't have worried!

While scouring Pinterest, I found this and I thought it would be nice to have one for Ziv's party:

Celebrant's faces through the first 12 months

Since we had a balloon theme, I decided to stick Ziv's faces on balloon shapes cut out from felt paper. Here's how my DIY project turned out:

I originally wanted to have gold helium-filled microfoil/mylar balloons to spell Ziv's name but Dang didn't have them. I found a supplier in Singapore but I discovered they were a bit complicated since they had to be heat-sealed. I didn't want to bother myself with such hassle so I just cut out Z, I and V out of carton and wrapped them with gold foil. Turned out okay to me!

I wanted rainbow colors to be prominent during the party so when I found this online, I knew I had to do it:

 

I bought crepe paper in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet then cut them out into strips. With the help of my tall hubby, I stuck them onto our garage's arch on the day of the party. Here's how it looked like:

Overall I was satisfied with the look and feel of Ziv's party. I dreamt of having a well branded party, like this, but I am happy with how Ziv's party turned out. It was us--relaxed and festive!

*****

I wanted Ziv to smash a cake when he turned one. It's an American tradition we first heard of when our nephew (ze hubby's sister's son) Jake turned one. I thought it was a fun photo opportunity. However, I didn't want Ziv to do it during the party itself since one, it would be messy and two, I wasn't sure how the guests and Ziv would react to it. So we did it on Ziv's actual birthday.

I just bought a ready-made cake from Gem's, and ordered a bunch of balloons from Dang. I set up the scene at our lawn using a blue blanket as background. I tied the balloons onto an IKEA house shape sorter (UP-inspired kasi) then laid the cake on the ground. We then waited for Ziv to wake up from his nap.

It looked like it was going to rain so when Ziv woke up, we immediately undressed him and put him down on the set. He was confused and didn't understand what was going on. He started to play with the balloons and didn't pay any mind to the cake. In an attempt to get things going, we put his hand on the icing but he wouldn't have any of it! He began to whine and asked to be carried.

I guess we shouldn't have hurried him but it was about to rain! My SIL also mentioned we should've had a rehearsal with a cupcake so Ziv would have known what to do on the day we were taking photos. Oh well. I'm glad I managed to get some cute photos though. Those would be a great way to remember the day he turned one.