How Do I Get People To Not Bring A Gift To My Baby’s First Birthday Party?
We are throwing my son a small first birthday party and I’m writing up the invites right now. I do not want people to feel obligated to bring him a gift. I just want people to come to share in his special day.
I thought of writing in the invite:
“Please only spoil me with your time and attention.”
My husband thinks that writing this will not deter people from bringing a gift. Does anyone have any other ideas?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
I would stick with what you came up with to write in the invites because it lets them know there is no obligation in a polite and creative way! Regardless of how you word it if people want to get him a gift they are going to.
At my son’s first birthday, it was just family, and i’d said to them all, not to take gifts, or if they did, not to get him heaps of toys, just clothes, but of course, they didn’t listen and he got spoilt.
If it’s family and close friends, just tell them in advance.
You can try the message, it’s sweet, but I think it’s inevitable that most people will bring gifts.
Don’t write:
“Please only spoil me with your time and attention.”
It could be taken inadvertently – like your being modest. Honestly just send out the invites and accept what is given to you…it is a one time special event and your son will have a blast opening all those presents with the help of other children.
If there are other small children attending they will ALL have a blast playing with your son’s new toys.
The way we did it is to say something like “The only presents we want is your presence. However, if you would like to bring a gift, we would love books or your old books that we can donate to the local library that we love so much.”
That way we were able to donate a bunch of books to the library each year and build our children’s libraries at the same time, rather than getting more toys.
Just an idea. Hope it helps!
i would put your presence is present enough.
but i agree with your husband. i don’t think anything is going to deter people from bringing him presents anyways.
(if you feel you have enough toys then maybe you could ask for every day essentials like diapers, wipes, food, sippy cups as he will need to get rid of the bottle, and clothes.)
Your hubs is right. You could put on there in bold bright red letters to not bring a gift and people would still do it because they want to. Just let them buy him some gifts but don’t take them all out of the packages and you can either donate them to Toys for Tots or something like that, or, you could save them for Christmas.
You don’t.
You write “your presence is your present” on the invite, but people will ignore you and bring gifts anyways. You say thank you, open them after the party and send thank you cards.
The best way to get the message across is to get straight to the point ‘no gifts please’. We put this on all our birthday cards for our kids. My kids friends always follow this rule and so do my family and friends that attend. =)
if you put it on the invite that gifts aren’t necessary it should be good enough because, otherwise there really is no other way to deter a person.
That is a great way to put it! Very sweet and polite but it gets the point across. Your child will probably still get some gifts. People love to get children presents.
why would u not want ur son 2 get b-day presents? its his first bday! i got loads of stuff for my first…
what’s wrong with people bringing giffts? I think it’s odd you would have a problem with that!
How about:
If u are thinking of bringing a gift, please convert it into a donation to the victims of tsunamis and earthquakes.