Birthdays are funny. When we’re young, we celebrate each one with excitement and anticipation of the year ahead. But we get older, we pass all the important legal milestones (yay I can rent a car!), and pretty soon birthdays take on a new tone.
Birthday parties for the elderly present a whole new set of challenges. While we may joke about a friend turning 40 “going over the hill,” elderly birthday parties require a little more tact and planning. In this article, we’ll help you come up with a great celebration for an elderly friend or relative. Check out our six elderly birthday party ideas below!
Pick a Great Spot
A great party depends on a great location. The elderly guest of honor may not have the ability or the desire to host a bunch of people in their home, and frankly, you may not want that either.
Finding a location for the party, not in yours or the celebrant’s home, has a lot of benefits. By providing a set start and end time, you can ensure the birthday boy or girl doesn’t have to stay for too long or clean up afterward.
If you’re celebrating someone who is able to travel, picking a favorite spot can turn their birthday into a special trip. Even a beloved local hangout like a bar or restaurant can make an excellent spot for an elderly birthday party, especially for someone who has patronized the establishment for years – assuming they’ve been friendly to the staff.
Invite the A-Team
We all meet a lot of people in our lives, and the list gets longer every day. While many people may want to celebrate an older adult’s special day, that person may not want to see all of those people.
Make sure to curate a guest list carefully. For surprise parties, this may present some challenges. Listen to the gossip and try to get a sense of who your guest of honor may want to see at a special celebration.
Too many people at a party can get overwhelming, especially for party-goers with limited energy and party planners with limited budgets.
Take a Look Back
A great elderly birthday party should celebrate and highlight the most memorable times in that person’s life. Finding a way to put those memories on display can inspire stories, laughs, tears, and everything that makes a party great.
A photo board offers a great chance to put all those memories in one place. You could have guests bring their favorite pictures to put on the board or put together one ahead of time.
Likewise, a photo album offers an excellent, passive conversation piece for a party that will make guests think back on all the great times they’ve had with the birthday boy or girl.
You could even put together a slideshow, either running on a loop through a projector or a more precise moment where everyone comes together during the party. Consider this a great moment for roasts and toast.
Make a Playlist
Parties need music! Put together a playlist of your favored guests’ favorite songs or songs that have some special meaning in their life.
A carefully curated playlist takes listeners on a journey through their life. We tend to connect music with specific times in our life. Like a photo album, the playlist can take party guests on a walk through the years and inspire reminiscence about ages past.
Pick a Theme
Themes help focus everything from decor to playlists to party games. A good theme allows guests to come dressed in costume, or maybe you design a specific article of clothing for everyone to wear.
Themes can range from the very specific to the just plain goofy. Maybe you’re planning a party for an avid angler, so you have a fish fry, and guests all receive a complimentary hat hook. Perhaps you’re planning a party for a huge Lord of the Rings fan, so the guest of honor wears a Gandalf hat.
Or maybe your honoree just loves Baton Rouge. A crawfish boil, jazz music, and beads everywhere – whether or not they’re distributed in the traditional way – would undoubtedly make for a memorable celebration.
For more ideas, check out this great video on birthday party ideas for adults!
Play the Hits
Whatever you choose to do for an elderly birthday party, make it something they’d like. It seems obvious, but sometimes in the enthusiasm to make a birthday special, we forget to consider who we’re celebrating.
No matter how special the milestone, keep it simple if the honoree hates parties. Serve foods they like. Bring people with whom they want to celebrate.
Closing Thoughts
Ultimately, a great party requires a little creativity. Finding a way to celebrate an elderly birthday party can create a new, beautiful memory to add to a lifetime of experiences. Hopefully, we got some of those creative juices flowing with this list of ideas!
