Photos have always been woven into my boy’s birthday parties. This might just be me, but all big celebrations deserve updated photos (just like when I was a girl, I thought I had to get a new dress for every single holiday or event. Wait… that’s still the case but I digress.) And what’s the point of taking the photo or having photos professionally taken if you aren’t doing anything with them? For Wisdom’s first birthday I was drawing a blank on the theme. That’s when it dawned on me that I didn’t need a theme at all… the photo I took of him all year could be the theme! In today’s post, I am going to show you how I threw a Photo Themed First Birthday Party that was the simplest and sweetest celebration for my baby.

 

Include Photos on Invite

I have done this on every single birthday invitation for my boys. I include photos of them on the back of the invitation. Most invitations are typically one-sided anyways and I have the cutest photos to share. This is the first was I share them! The unexpected joy of this seeing them displayed in the homes of the family members we send them to. My parents have every single invitation I’ve sent taped to their refigerator. And they aren’t “tape things to the refrigerator” type people if you know what I mean.

Pictures as the Tablescape

I purchased 2 things for the party decor, prints, and balloons. That’s it! I had photos absolutely everywhere. They told the story of my baby’s first months of life. It was really special to me to see my family looking at all the photos. I simply laid out Chatbooks prints on the table and bought little print stands (you can find them on Amazon here) to decorate the food table. Chatbooks prints are so affordable and I knew that these prints were probably going to get damaged. I was totally fine with that and had planned to just reorder any that I really wanted. To my surprise, not one print was ruined! I have every single print in this glass box displayed on the selves in our home.

Albums

I absolutely love, love, love Chatbook’s month books. Every month, I take my favorite photos I’ve to take (both on my phone and with my fancy camera) and make a month book out of them. I add little facts and things I never want to forget in the captions of some of the pictures. Unexpectantly, this became my baby book for Wisdom! I had accidentally created the best baby book ever! Not only did I add info that you would typically add in a baby book (like birth stats) I added things that were just special to our family. Like what we did for fun during the pandemic with a newborn and 4 years old! I proudly displayed these albums at the birthday party for family and friends to look at.

So there you have it, how I created a photo themed first birthday party. My favorite part was the decore was anything but a waste. I will literally keep those prints and albums forever. They also second as beautiful decor in our home!

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