How Much I Spent On My Baby's 1st Birthday Party

Recording the amounts I spent for my baby's 1st birthday here for future reference and also for those of you who would like to have some form of comparison! Disclaimer: I know it's more for myself than my baby and I know some parents would never "waste" the money on something like this because it's not the most practical thing to do. BUT the reason I wanted to do it was because:

1. I didn't have a proper wedding (lol one of my cousins-in-law was shocked I already had a baby since he didn't even know/forgot I had gotten married);
2. My relatives who had brought me up are old (70s and 80s) and I want to spend more time with them, especially because I had been away for 2 years when I was studying;
3. I want my baby to interact with my relatives too
4. I wanted an excuse to try some new vegan food!

Birthday Deco

Personalized canvas (Around A2 size): $50
I designed a milestone board on Canva and ordered from Optimal Print. Optimal Print has templates for collages so I used that and surrounded the milestone board image with my baby's photos. Do note that they do charge an additional delivery fee if you don't hit their minimum order; I ordered other canvasses together (amounts are not included in the $50 stated above) so I didn't have to pay extra for delivery. No regrets for this because I received a lot of praise and I also love the other canvasses I ordered. You might be able to find cheaper prices on Taobao though, except that Taobao's delivery time is sometimes not very predictable.

2nd hand preserved flowers from Carousell: $18
I didn't want balloons because I don't like popping them after the party and I find them such a waste of material. Even worse if they were helium balloons and float off into the sky and land up in the ocean days later... So I thought just get canvasses and preserved flowers that I could decorate my house with after the party. Also I only planned to share the photos on IG (wasn't planning to print them out) and that meant I could easily put IG stickers on them.

Vegan Food

7-course catered buffet from Nature Vegetarian Cafe: $664
(Delivery fee was $100 instead of $70 because of CNY period)

Food was pretty good and my guests liked it too! I asked for less salt and less oil as vegetarian food tends to be on the oily side. Ordered the min quantity of 30pax for 35 guests (including ourselves the hosts) and there were leftovers probably enough for 5-7 more. (Actually I realized 5 people didn't come so if they had come, the amount of food would have been just nice.) Dessert was devoured though. I liked their service too cuz they were easily contactable via WhatsApp. But one thing was that they didn't provide cups for the free drink oops.

Birthday Cake

Frozen cakes from Cake Botanica (one 6" and one 7"): $238
Healthy plant-based cake that didn't have the coconutty taste which I dislike. It's a well-made and beautiful cake actually, but I think the flavour isn't really my favourite. (It tasted really good when I had it at home though. I think the strong taste of the buffet kinda covered the taste of the cake.) I would have gotten chocolate but hubs doesn't seem to like chocolate-flavoured cakes. Also I wished the base was made of something else more similar to digestive biscuits. But it's really clean-tasting and I like that I'm putting healthy and nourishing food into my body. No after-party gelat feels. And definitely no guilt.

Venue

Condo function room: $25
(My parents' place was $30 but they had an event the same day so we couldn't book it, thus we ended up booking my cousin's place which turned out to be bigger and cheaper.)

We booked the room from 11am - 4pm (it's a fixed slot).
Food was set up by 1145pm (I told them to set up by 12 noon).
Party started at 12 noon (time written on my invitation).
Actually 1230pm because most guests arrived at that time.
Party ended around 3pm (Other than lunch, my party involved Zhua Zhou [I went around asking everyone which object my baby would pick], cake cutting, and photo-taking). We also had enough time to dabao the leftover food before the caterers came to pack up. (We told them to come at about 3pm, I think they reached a little after 3.)

Total damage: $995
(Spent about $33 per pax including ourselves as hosts; I think it's reasonable!)