Sweet Birthday Tea Party Ideas

Sweet and easy ideas are what you need when beginning to plan a birthday tea party for your daughter! Does this sound like what you are in need of for your daughter's next birthday party? Use the following ideas to plan a day that your daughter and her friends will remember for years!

Everything You Need for Tea Party Birthday Celebration:

Tea Party Ideas and Tips
Games and Activities
Tea Party Food Ideas
Fancy Cake Ideas
Princess Party Invitation and Wording Ideas
Fun Decorations and Party Favors

Keep it Simple Birthday Tea Party Ideas

When planning a birthday tea party, always remember to try and keep it simple especially if the guests are under the age of 5. By keeping it simple, you will have less meltdowns and more tea party fun! Here are some great ideas to help you accomplish this.

Keep your guest list to no more than 12 girls. Eight girls are ideal but 12 can be an okay number.
Decide if your party will be a princess tea party or just a tea party. There are many activities you can do when you combine the two together, but if you are strictly having a tea party, then your party will look a little bit different. This plan is only for a birthday tea party. If you need help with planning a princess tea party, the princess party page has wonderful ideas to use.
Moms love to watch their little girls having fun at a tea party. Why not make some baked potatoes or some chicken salad for the moms and ask them to join you for the party?
Keep your eyes open all year long for items you can use for your tea party at after holiday sales and any time at stores that you might visit. The wedding section of your favorite party store is a great place to find pretty plastic serving pieces very inexpensively.
Don't worry if you don't have nice serving pieces to display the food, just use pretty plastic ware or anything pink and you will be good to go.

Birthday Tea Party Ideas for Games and Activities

Tea parties are so much fun, because you can do activities that you wouldn't normally be able to do at a birthday party. Try some of these birthday tea party ideas for a great time.

Wear Your Favorite Party Dress- Invite all the guests to come to the birthday party in their favorite dress.

Dress-Up Fun- Before the party, try and gather as many dress-up items as possible like high heel shoes, fun ladies' hats, fun jewelry, etc. Good Will, garage sales, and thrift stores are great places to shop. You can also find some hidden treasures in Grandma's closet or attic. Have these items set out in baskets before your guests arrive. Set out a mirror. An inexpensive and fun thing that I created for our tea party is a decorated wall mirror. Just take craft boa and hot glue it to the outside of the mirror and set it out next to all the dress-up items. The girls love seeing how they look in all of the dress-up items.

Balancing Act- Teach the girls how to walk while trying to balance a book on their head. Talk to them about the reason that girls a long time ago were taught this. Then have relay races where each team has to do this. The first team to finish wins.

Miss Manners- Manners-- classes are making a comeback. It is a lot of fun to give a lesson on manners such as how to set a table, phone etiquette, and/or even thank you card writing. How to write thank you cards is my favorite lesson, because you can let them practice on really pretty floral stationary. The art of writing thank you cards has been lost with the use of email and our busy lives. Moms really love it when you do this activity with their daughters.

Tea Cup Flowers- The sweetest activity that all the girls love to do is to plant flowers inside china tea cups. Before your party, collect enough china tea cups and saucers for each guest. Don't worry about the saucers matching the cups. In fact I think it is considered cool or "shabby chic" these days to have them not match. You can pick these up very inexpensively at thrift stores, flea markets, garage sales, etc. Hot glue the cup to the saucer to prevent dropping by little hands. Decide before the party if you are going to use real flowers or artificial ones. If you are using real flowers, you will need a watering can and some potting soil. If the girls came in their finest party dress, you might want to use artificial flowers instead. These can be purchased anywhere like your favorite discount store or craft store. Two bushes of flowers usually come close to providing enough flowers for everyone when they are cut apart. If you will be using real flowers, you will need to help each of the girls fill their cup with potting soil. If you are using artificial flowers, you will want to prepare the cups ahead of time by filling the cups with floral foam. This can be purchased at any craft store or online.

If you invited the moms to stay, a great way to change this fun birthday tea party activity up for them is to make tea cup pin cushions. You could have the moms do this while the girls are playing. These are so cute and fun to make for the moms. You can find a wonderful free tutorial for this at www.youcanmakethis.com.

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Tea Party Sunhats- Girls absolutely love this activity, but it takes some volunteer moms to help you as you will be working with hot glue. It is helpful to have a few extra set of hands to all be gluing at the same time in order for this activity to not take too long. Before the party, purchase some plain craft straw hats. Also pick up some inexpensive artificial flower bushes. Cut the flowers off the bush so that you only have the flower and not any of the stem. Make sure you have approximately 15-20 flowers per guest. Give each girl a hat and a baggie with her flowers in it. Show the girls how to arrange the flowers around the center of the hat to make a beautiful sunhat or party hat. When the girls have the flowers just like they want them, they can then take the hat very carefully to a mom to hot glue the flowers on. If you do this before you eat, then the girls can wear the hats to the table. This makes for some great pictures.

Birthday Tea Party Food

At some birthday party, food is not necessary. At this party, it is a whole different story. Food should be one of the main highlights of the party. When having a birthday tea party, you don't need to worry about having a seven coarse meal, but you can bet that all of the girls will be looking forward to some fun tea party food.

One mistake that many moms make is that they try to serve fancy food that the girls really don't like or don't want to try. When this happens, a lot of food gets wasted. What I have done has always been successful, and the food never goes uneaten.

When planning the birthday tea party menu, I serve food that the girls like, but present it in such a way that it is very fancy and tea party like. Here is a list of some of my favorite birthday tea party food:

peanut butter and jelly or other kid friendly sandwiches cut into flower and heart shapes (absolutely no crusts allowed)
wedding mints served in little plastic Cinderella slippers
little cocktail wieners served with fancy toothpicks- Make sure not to serve these to children under 5 as they are choking hazards.
pink jello with a fancy swirl of whipped cream on the top
heart and flower shaped sugar cookies with pastel candy sugar sprinkled on the top
pink lemonade
sugar cubes to put in the lemonade
Chex Mix served in pretty bowls
Fruit salad- If using grapes, make sure to cut them up when putting them in the salad.
Pastel marshmallows- Depending on what holiday is occurring at the same time as your birthday tea party, it is sometimes possible to find marshmallows in fun shapes like hearts during February and bunnies around Easter time.
pink cupcakes with pastel sprinkles on top

As you can see there is nothing special about the food. It is how you serve the food is what makes it fun and special. Remember the following when presenting the food:

Always cut sandwiches and other things into sweet shapes like hearts and flowers.
If you can, serve the food in pretty crystal serving pieces. It is okay if you don't have any crystal bowls. Just purchase some inexpensive and often disposable clear plastic bowls and trays.
If at all possible, let the girls eat off of real china. It is rare that something actually gets broken, but if you are nervous about this then go ahead and use the clear plastic plates, cups, forks, etc.
It is always fun to find some really fun princess or floral paper napkins to use for the party. This way, you won't have to worry about those stains that little hands can get on your good napkins. I usually do the same with the tablecloth as well. A simple pink plastic tablecloth works great on this day.
Make the table fancy looking by adding candles and pink tulle bows to the candle holders. Make sure to not actually burn the candles. It just looks really nice and fancy. Another fun thing to do is to tie tulle around the back of the chairs in a big bow.
Make fancy little place cards on your computer and have those set out where you would like each girl to sit.

Birthday Tea Party Cake Ideas

The only rule to follow when deciding what kind of birthday tea party cake to have is to remember one word, and that is "fancy."

You can have cake, cookies, cupcakes, or whatever you would like to serve but just make it as fancy as possible. One thing to remember is that fancy doesn't have to mean complicated. For me it is always about simple but fancy.

What is considered fancy to little girls at a birthday tea party? Simple things like sprinkles, colored sugar, sparkly candles, flowers, pretty decorative cake toppers, and anything pink and pastel.

In other words, you can make something as simple as pink cupcakes and sprinkle pastel sparkle sugar on top, and it would be a hit.

Some moms love to decorate cakes. I have seen pictures of a cake in the shape of a teapot or a sunhat with flowers on it. I do not have the directions for these, but I am sure that a simple search online would yield many results. My favorite cake to make for a tea party is a pastel cake that is covered in little pastel flowers.

Birthday Tea Party Invitation Wording and Ideas

Usually your guest list for a tea party will be minimal so this is definitely one of those parties where you can easily just call all of the moms and do an invite over the phone. If you prefer to send out an invitation, then I would do something very simple but elegant.

Just printing the details of the invitation on pretty pink paper and covering it with vellum is always a wonderfully feminine idea. An added touch to this type of invitation is to tie some sheer ribbon at the top.

If you love to be creative like I do, then you could print the following poem as invitation wording for your birthday tea party:

"Wear your best dress

And maybe a hat too!

It's a birthday tea party,

And we're inviting you!"

Tea Party Favors

When we have our tea party, I try and have a fun frilly basket by the front door filled with dress-up jewelry like fun rings, beads, bracelets, etc. For a party like a birthday tea party, just a little fun token from the party will be enough to send the girls off with a smile.

However, if you chose to do some activities where the girls actually made something like tea pot flowers or tea party sunhats, then the item that they made could be their party favor as well. This should be one of the easiest parts of your party to plan out as any little fancy dress-up trinket is always fun to give and well received.

Some of Our Favorite Tea Party Favors:

A special party favor would be to give an actual tea cup to the each girl filled with some pretty candy like pastel Hershey Kisses found at Easter time. Who knows? You could be the reason that one of the little girls begins collecting tea cups. I collect tea pots and can't wait to pass my collection on to my daughter one day.

Wouldn't it be great if this simple little party favor inspired a mom or a little girl to begin her very own collection?

Having a birthday tea party is so much fun not only for the girls but also for the moms as well. Why not make this party an all girls party through and through and give a little tea party for the moms at the same time?

Just serve them different varieties of hot tea, chicken salad, fruit salad, and a light dessert. You will be surprised at how many people you bless on this party day.