Alternate title: Why I LOVE planning my own birthdays!
One thing that I’ve learned as an adult is that I am in charge of my life. I’m in charge of my emotions, my money, my time, my fun, my goals, my happiness — all of it! I can’t just leave those things to chance and hope they’ll work out; or I suppose I could, but if I want to take charge of my results, I have to take charge of ME and all those things I mentioned above.
One of the major ways that I’ve learned this is true is with birthdays and other holidays/celebrations. While I understand the temptation to leave those things in the hands of other people because you want to feel celebrated, I like to remind myself that people aren’t mind-readers, and I’ll enjoy my birthday/celebrations much more if I make what I want of them! People are just all different and what sounds fun to one person may sound like torture to another, so it can be really tricky if you leave your birthday in the hands of someone else!
Nearly 10 years ago, I threw my husband a surprise birthday party. We had been married less than a year, and I thought I was the best wife for throwing him a surprise party. While he didn’t *HATE* the party, I later learned that it wasn’t at all what he would have planned for himself. He’s not a fan of big groups, surprises, or being the center of attention — all things I didn’t quite grasp yet because they’re so opposite from me and we were still so new together. A few years later, I tried again to plan his birthday party, and while I did better (smaller group, no surprises), it still didn’t seem to be what he wanted. I tried SO HARD to do special things for him, only to realize that we simply have different preferences. And since he’s much more low-key for birthdays, my birthdays were much lower-key when he was in charge of them, despite the fact that i like to be BIG on celebrating. We just don’t know how to plan appropriately for each other since we’re so different!
When I realized I could plan whatever I wanted all by myself, I started having much more exciting birthdays! We’ve also tried to instill this skill of planning our own birthdays in our kids — we involve them in the planning process and try to do what they have SAID they want, rather than giving them a day full of surprises.
My experiences with birthdays post-marriage is one part of why I started planning my own birthdays. The other part was reading a book called The Art of Gathering, by Priya Parker. I’ve read a lot of great books over the last few years, but this is one that stands out because of the ways it caused me to actually change my behaviors. I learned a lot from this book about how to make gatherings more meaningful and more successful. Here are a few of my favorite principles from the book.
Principles of Good Gatherings
why are we gathering, and why is it important?
One of the most important things to consider for any gathering is the WHY. Before Parker’s book, I never realized how many gatherings there are where people don’t really stop to consider the why.
While there’s certainly nothing wrong with monthly family dinners, family gatherings for holidays, or family trips, the gatherings can kind of fall flat if there’s not an intentional reason behind the gathering (something beyond “to spend time together” or “this is just what we do”). You can usually get to a deeper reason for the gathering if you ask yourself “why” a few extra times. Once you know your WHY, you can plan activities or conversation topics that actually facilitate your purposes.
With my most recent birthday party, I gathered a few of my closest friends for an overnight hotel stay in a nearby city. Some of my purposes for the party were to spoil my friends, to help them form stronger connections with each other, and to have laugh-out-loud FUN. Once I knew what I wanted to create with the gathering, I came up with better ideas for the specific things we’d do.
To spoil my friends, I covered the cost of the hotel and had a gift bag for each of them with a few of my favorite things and a few of their favorite things (I sent out a survey ahead of time to get some information from them!). While I didn’t pay for their meals, I did plan dinner and brunch at two delicious restaurants, because eating good food often makes me feel spoiled! 🤣
To help them form stronger connections with each other, I asked everyone to come prepared to share a challenging instance that has shaped them in some deep way and/or shifted their view of the world. I wanted to encourage them to be a little more vulnerable with each other and share things that we don’t normally share with people we aren’t already close to. This was a really interesting part of the party because I learned new things about some of my oldest friends!
For laugh-out-loud FUN, we learned a short TikTok dance and played Taboo. These activities were FUN, but they also served the purpose of bringing us closer together because they helped us let loose and be silly with each other.
It’s Okay to gather people from different parts of your life
Before reading the book, I really hated gatherings that included people I didn’t know at all. Of course I couldn’t do anything about gatherings hosted by other people, but for myself, I liked to gather people who were already connected in some way — friends from high school, friends from church, friends in the neighborhood, etc.
Parker taught me that it’s okay (and can actually be a lot more interesting!) to gather people from different parts of your life, you just have to help facilitate their connection in some way (rather than simply hope people start connecting on their own).
A couple ways to do this are to make specific introductions and pointing out a commonality (“FriendA, meet FriendB! You guys are both big readers!”), or give your gathering a focus that pulls everyone into the same conversation/experience (“Everyone, please come prepared to share about THIS topic around the dinner table.”)
When I began planning my first adult birthday party, this was one of the major guiding principles. I thought about who I could invite, and realized I didn’t want to invite people just because they already all knew each other — I wanted to invite people who were most meaningful to me, even if they didn’t already know each other. So I invited friends from various times of my life, but who I’ve considered a BEST friend at some point (past or current).
To help connect everyone, I asked my guests to come prepared to share a story about something they love about me, and I prepared a story about something I love about each of my guests as well. Some might be uncomfortable with this prompt, but it was MY birthday, and I’m okay asking for a little extra attention on my birthday 💁🏼♀️ And also, this prompt actually worked really well for connecting us all!
It allowed my friends to connect a bit over things they all know and love about me because they all know and love me (so as soon as one friend shared something, another could be like “YES THAT IS SO TRUE!”), and it also allowed me to share meaningful things I love about each of them, which helped them learn deeper things about each other, even if it was only their first time meeting.
I now gather this same group every year for my birthday so we can keep connecting. At some point, I want to do a girls’ trip cruise for my birthday, but I realized I’d have to help my friends invest time and energy into each other over a few gatherings if I want anyone to be willing to pay for a cruise with people who weren’t their own friends to begin with!
generous exclusion
I used to think that I should invite as many people as possible to parties. I thought, everyone wants to be included!, so why not invite more? Plus, then hopefully I’d get a better turnout because I invited so many to begin with. Yet I was constantly dissatisfied with these gatherings because I would still have just one or two people turn up!
I especially noticed this when I tried to host monthly girls’ nights with anyone in my neighborhood who wanted to come. This type of informal and all-inclusive invitation doesn’t tend to be appealing to people because they don’t feel specifically wanted at the gathering. I started having much more success when I began my Cake & Conversation girls’ nights, where I extend personal invitations to 5 different people every time (and where I also ask for a firm RSVP 🙃).
It can be tricky when you don’t want people to feel excluded, but I think the way around this is to diversify who you invite to various gatherings (aka, more gatherings with fewer people each!). That way, you can have smaller, more intimate gatherings where you actually build stronger relationships.
don’t be a chill host
This is another principle I LOVE! How often have you been with one or more people, and you’re trying to decide what to do or where to eat, and everyone just says, “I’m good with whatever!” It seems like the generous thing to say, but it doesn’t help get a decision made.
When you’re the host, you are the king or queen of your gathering, and you should rule it graciously, but rule it, nonetheless. You are the one who is in charge of making sure things happen, so make things happen! You open the party, you close the party, you lead the party through transitions. I’ve certainly felt like it was the gracious thing to do to allow guests to talk amongst themselves until there seems to be a lull before getting things started, but most often, people just feel a little awkward about arrangements like that. People are actually grateful to be told what to do and when to do it, because then they feel like they can be good guests (they don’t have to guess if they’re doing the right thing or not!).
If you’re worried about someone’s willingness to participate in something, make sure to provide clear expectations ahead of time! Allow people to say “no” about coming to that particular gathering without any hard feelings.
For my second birthday gathering, I wanted to do something a little wild and out of my comfort zone because it was my 30th birthday — I wanted something exciting! 🎉🎉 So I invited my friends to join me at a karaoke bar. Singing karaoke is not something that everyone is up for, and I was okay if someone didn’t want to come because it was too much for them. But the activity wasn’t up for debate — it wasn’t a “Well how do you guys feel about karaoke?” situation; it was a solid plan.
With my birthday party this year (the overnight one), I had a specific itinerary for the whole time (even sent it out ahead of time!), and while I may have thought that seemed a little over-the-top in the past, it really helped the party to go smoothly, and all of my friends commented on how they loved the thoroughness of the plan and the chance to just show up and know they were in for a good time.
This principle is one I keep in mind throughout the planning process for any gathering, as well as throughout the gathering itself. If I’m the host, it’s MY responsibility to make sure things go smoothly/according to plan!
Learning about making gatherings more meaningful has truly enriched my gatherings and my life! I go into everything with a much more intentional attitude, whether it’s a birthday party for my kids, a family trip with my little family, or a family trip with extended family! The only downside is that I now notice much more acutely when gatherings don’t seem to have a clear purpose 🙃 But all in all, the benefits outweigh the detriments! And I, for one, will NEVER go back to leaving my birthday plans up to chance 😁
Do you plan your own birthday celebrations? If so, what are some of your favorite ways you’ve celebrated? 😁