For the first year, celebrated by committee
The guest of honour will not remember any of it, so this invitation is written for the grown-ups: a running order, a word about naps, and a reply page that counts small people properly.
One is a baby's party: ninety minutes of attention, a nap that must not be missed, cake arriving at a moment you have chosen deliberately. The other is a grown-ups' party, where people want to know whether they are eating, whether they are staying for all of it, and where the buggy goes. If the invitation answers only one of the two, the other half of the room spends the afternoon uncomfortable.
Say what the day actually looks like, in order, and the tone of the whole thing changes. Parents stop asking questions in the group chat because the answers are already in front of them.
Written for a first birthday at home, cake and a paddling pool involved. Swap the details.
One whole year of Ines: candles, a cake she is allowed to destroy, and the people who showed up for all of it.
2pm, everyone arrives. 2.45, cake and the smashing of it. 3.15, coffee for grown-ups while Ines sleeps in the buggy. We finish at 4.
This is a stay-and-play party, so every grown-up stays with their child. There are cushions, a shaded corner, and the gate stays shut.
We are serving jelly, breadsticks and cucumber for the under-fives. If your little one has a routine or a dietary thing, tell us when you reply and we will make room for it.
No presents at all. If you would still like to contribute, Ines has forty-seven books and would happily manage with forty-eight.
A headcount at a first birthday is a moving number, because it includes guests who cannot reply.
A named moment in the running order means everyone photographs it at the same time, the cake is fresh, and the guest of honour is not three hours past the nap.
One code on the table lets guests upload their own pictures as the day goes on, so the afternoon ends up in a single gallery rather than four separate phones.
A moderated page where grandparents, cousins and the night nurse can leave a line. This is the record you read out to her in fifteen years.
Set one on the page and send it with the invitation, so the home address and the photographs stay with the people you actually invited.
First-birthday invitations produce a peculiar guilt: the party is really for the adults, but the wording is about the baby. Plain honesty reads better here than sentiment. Say that you are marking her first year by surrounding her with people you love, and that lunch, cake and a bounded end time are how you have worked that out.
The parents reading it are making one decision, which is whether the timing suits their own child's routine. Give them that decision clearly and the replies come fast.
How it works
Open a birthday event, or tell Jitabi on WhatsApp: first birthday, Sunday at home, cake at quarter to three, twelve adults and six small children. You get a draft with the sections in place and keep the wording you like.
Arrival, cake, coffee, finish. Put the parent notes underneath it: stay-and-play, buggy parking, which gate. Then pick a calm design from the dozens available; none of them require a cartoon animal.
Until you publish, the page is a draft and nobody outside your house can see it. Then the link goes to the family chat with the date and the reply-by line in the message itself.
The guest list shows adults and the children named with them, with meal notes attached. Print a code for the cake table so the photographs arrive on the page while the afternoon is still going.
Questions
Ask on the invitation and let the reply carry it. When somebody says yes, they name who comes with them, which covers the toddler, the baby in the pushchair and the partner who is not on your phone. Set a limit if space is tight and the number stays honest.
Yes, and it is kinder to the baby than an open afternoon. A running order with a clear finish means the guests who only want cake come for cake, and nobody is still there while you are wiping icing off the floor.
Not at a first birthday. The nap is the reason several families will say no, so put the cake before it and let people plan around it. One line, cake at a quarter to three, saves you six conversations.
The page lives at a link that only you send, and a password keeps it to the families you share it with. Nobody finds it by searching, and until you publish, there is nothing to find at all.
Say what you are serving and take meal choices and allergies with the reply. At a first birthday the adults are eating a real lunch while the children have breadsticks, so the vegetarian needs a plate as much as the under-five does.
Get Started
Write the day in order, count the small people, and let the photographs and the wishes collect themselves on the same page.
