Golden Celebration: 60th Birthday Party Ideas for Mom

Hi, my name is Kaitlin and I’m a party-holic. It’s not so much attending parties that I’m addicted to (although I do enjoy myself any excuse to celebrate just like everyone else). But I can’t get enough of HOSTING parties.

I know what you’re thinking, who in their right mind would choose to HOST a party instead of just attending one? I mean, there’s the set-up, there’s the clean-up, and not to mention all the planning in-between!

I can admit, throwing a great bash is hard work. And that’s why most people shy away from it. It’s too much work, there’s too much involved, it costs too much…. these are all excuses I hear why people hesitate from jumping up and down to throw their bestie the party of a lifetime.

However, it doesn’t HAVE to be so hard. Especially if you split up what needs to be done between multiple hosts, and you can cut down on costs drastically by DIYing. You’d be surprised with how professional-looking a party can turn out on a budget. Especially when it’s for arguably the most important person in your life – your mom!

60th Birthday Party Idea for Mom

At the end of last year, my mom turned 60. My mom has always made my birthdays one of the most special times of the year. I never felt robbed from my amazing birthday party experiences as a child. So now that I was old enough, I wanted to make sure I returned the favor for her big 6-0!

But what were some really great 60th birthday party ideas for mom? I needed to make sure it was classy, and not cheesy. She was turning 60… this wasn’t some 12 year old birthday party after all. But I wanted to throw it at my house (because renting out a space somewhere just wasn’t in my budget) and DIY as much as possible (because, that’s just what I love to do)!

And after much debate, I settled on a “golden” theme. It wasn’t her “golden” birthday (I missed that when she was 10), however, she was entering into the “golden” age of her life. So what better way to kick it off than with a gold-inspired 60th birthday bash!

But how was I going to fit my entire family (20ish people) in my house, feed them all, provide a full bar (because family parties NEED a full bar), and make it all look classy for at or under $1000? It was going to be a stretch, but who am I to ever shy away from a DIY challenge?

Where to Start a 60th Birthday Party

Homemade Invitations with Matching Envelope Calligraphy

First thing’s first, invites! Now I know Paperless post and invites online are all the rage right now, but when you’re dealing with an older crowd (or anything you’re doing something formal, in my option) you ALWAYS want to go with a solid, MAILED invitation.

Now, invites can get pretty pricey, so this is where creative thinking comes in. I went on Etsy and bought a cute design for $24. Then I got some beige cardstock and printed them at home (and backed them with thicker gold cardstock).

Then, I got some inexpensive 5×7″ envelopes and hand calligraphied each addressee onto them (I have an easy calligraphy hack here that takes virtually no calligraphy skill but makes your invitations look SPECTACULAR)!

I’ll post the full step-by-step tutorial on exactly how they came together on here next week.

Supplies Needed:

• 5×7″ Envelopes
• Beige Cardstock
• Metallic Cardstock
• Invite Design (buy on Etsy or design yourself)
• Calligraphy Pen
  • Light Box (optional, only needed if using calligraphy on your envelopes)

Total Price: $40 for 25 custom invitations

The Table-Scape and B&W Table Runners

   

I have a little love affair with table runners. You can make any party look EXACTLY how you want it to without spending a fortune – just add a table runner in the color that goes with your theme! It makes the room POP and really pulls the theme together.

In my case, I went with black & white striped runners with gold dots. The black and white were a nice contrast to the rest of the theme (which was gold) and the little gold dots tied it all together.

Again, I’ll show you next week EXACTLY what you need to do to DIY. But to get this exact look, here’s what you’ll need:

Supplies Needed:

• 3, 6 foot long folding banquet tables
• 3 yards of fabric (1 yard for each 6′ long table)
• 40″ Gold Mylar Balloons (Numbers 6 & 0)
• White table linens (cheaper to buy on Amazon than rent)
• Beige table napkins (again, cheaper to buy on Amazon than rent)
• White folding chairs (rent these from a local rental place. Cheaper to rent than buy).
• Gold plate chargers
  • I already had these handy from my wedding registry

Total Cost: $130 for 24 place settings
(plus $30 chair rental cost)

Homemade Neutral Florals with Gold Sparkle Vases

Making chic florals is a LOT easier and more inexpensive than you ever had imagined! Honestly, I can;t stress enough how you never need to go to a florist again. Seriously!

The way I achieved my perfect gold/neutral look to go with my theme was first I bought some inexpensive glass vases, and painted them gold (you can see the full tutorial on how to do that here).

Then, I just went to my local Costco warehouse to buy the flowers in bulk. If you don’t have a Costco near you, don’t fret. Just go to your local floral wholesaler or flower mart. They’ll have the same, bulk florals for the same, inexpensive prices.

Anyway, I went to Costco and picked out about 4 bunches of flowers that were the color scheme I needed to complete my look. 4 Costco-sized bunched will fill exactly 6 tall bud vases perfectly. Just remember, the larger the vases, the more flowers you’ll need.

Then, just bring them home, cut the stems, and place them in your newly decorated gold vases. Voi la! Now they’re ready to be displayed prominently as beautiful, chic centerpieces.

QUICK TIP: If you’re working with hydrangeas, please make sure that when you cut the stems, have a pot of boiling water on hand to put the cut ends of the stems in for 30-60 seconds. If you don’t boil the cut ends, hydrangeas emit a sap-like substance that cuts off their water supply and the flowers wilt in 12 hours (don’t say I didn’t warn you!).

Supplies Needed:

• 6 tall/skinny glass vases (2 for each table)
• Gold spray paint
• Gold glitter
• 1 bunch of roses (2 dozen) from your local Costco
• 3 Bunches of Hydrangeas (6 stems in each) from your local Costco

Total Cost: $78 for 6 floral centerpieces
(including gold glitter vases)

Simple Gold Vanilla Buttercream Cake & Cupcake Display

Ok now. If your mom is anything like mine, she’s probably very much looking forward to her cake. Us ladies have a HUGE sweet tooth. However, there’s no need to spend $50 on a custom cake from a special bakery when your local supermarket can make you pretty much ANYTHING you want for less than HALF the price.

And just FYI- I’ve never had so many compliments on a cake before (taste AND design). It’ll be the focal point of your dessert table, and you won’t need much else to satisfy your guests after dinner. I chose to omit other desserts and go solely with cake. But I added cupcakes below my cake stand to make my tiny dessert table stand out as a focal point of the party. I’m glad I did. It was a huge hit.

If you want to recreate the golden cake look I have above, here’s everything you’ll need:

Supplies Needed:

• 10-12″ round 2 layer cake from SAFEWAY (or other local market – they have the BEST cakes at the BEST prices)
• Gold Disco Dust (they won’t have gold, so bring this with you)
• 8 white, buttercream cupcakes
  • OPTIONAL:
    • Glass Cake Stand

Total Cost: $25 for the cake AND cupcakes

Golden Bar Setup

Well, if your family is like mine, the bar is the focal point of every party. I rearranged the furniture in my house so that the dining area was in my living room, and flipped my couches so that the sitting area & bar were adjacent to the open kitchen so people could walk straight through to the bar and sit down with their drinks 🙂

As for the decor, I flooded the bar with golden goodies to tie the theme together. I bought a gold tassel garland off of Amazon, and paired them with a gold glitter flag banner. Using the pre-made banner, I added wording for my mom’s birthday with black cardstock (I have the full DIY banner tutorial here).

In addition, I added some gold fans on the wall behind the bar to utilize the entire wall, and added some gold straws and gold dotted glasses and napkins to the bar itself. If you want to add a little extra flair, you can add customized flags with sayings onto the straws. Mine said #sexysixty – which the party certainly was!!

Additionally, I needed more than 2 dotted glasses to give the bar the look I was going for, so I made them DIY! You can find that tutorial here. And I made DIY drink signs that matched my invitations perfectly (you can find that full tutorial on here next week).

Finally, I stocked the bar with not only a signature cocktail named just for my mom (a “Kathy-Tini” that was basically a pink lemonade and vodka) but with  premium alcohol for the rest of the party-goers. Because the first rule of throwing a good party – is make the alcohol good and keep it flowing!! I think my plan worked just fine 🙂

Supplies Needed:

• Gold and white tassel banner
• Gold glitter flag banner
  • Black cardstock (to add wording to flag banner)
• Gold metallic fans (wall decoration)
• Gold dotted glasses
  • SEE TUTORIAL FOR FULL DIY INSTRUCTIONS
• Gold design straws (see tutorial for how to add 60th birthday flags)
• Chic drink jugs
  • And jug stands (I have silver from my wedding but gold would look great here)
• Drink tub (to keep ice and drinks chilled)

Total Cost: Varies depending on how much you already have

Photo Timeline

What would a big monumental birthday party be without a little blast from the past, huh?

Well, I think my mom would have about killed me if I took her original 1960s pictures out of her photo albums to use them for a photo collage. It would have made her more mad than happy.

So in order to pull this off, while home for Thanksgiving, I went and found her old photo albums and took pictures of all the pictures I wanted to use with my phone (I have a pretty high quality camera on my iPhone 6).

Then, when I returned home, I uploaded the pictures onto Shutterfly, cropped them as needed, and had them printed and mailed back to me. Now, I had perfect digital reprinted pictures of my mom, without having to disturb her precious originals.

Then, I just tapes some twine in layers onto a large chalkboard I have handing in my kitchen, and placed each picture one by one with a clothespin onto the strings (in perfect chronological order). Ta da! Her photo timeline was complete.

Nobody could walk by that collage without stopping to take a look at each picture and reminisce about how they remembered my mom way back when. It was really fun for everyone involved, especially her.

Supplies Needed:

• Twine
• Clothespins
• Re-prints of old pictures
  • Optional:
    • Wood framed chalkboard backdrop 

Total Cost: $15
(not including chalkboard background)

Making an Outdoor Space Indoors

If you have a small home like I do, throwing a party for more than 10 people at your house frightens you. It most certainly did me.

Our entire bottom floor is only 850 square feet, and I was going to try to fit 20 people in there (with my couches AND banquet tables). My mom’s birthday is in December, so my outdoor space was virtually non-useable. However, I was determined to make my backyard patio into a sitting area that people wouldn’t dread hanging out on because of the cold weather (and possible rain).

So what I did was get the thickest poly-sheeting I could find to keep the cold air out and warm air in (6 mil). Then, I enclosed my entire back patio with it. I draped the sheeting on top of my trellis and duct taped it to my roof gutters to stay up. Then, I draped it all the way down to the concrete and used 12 red bricks to hold the sheeting down from the outside (so little air could escape and the weight of the bricks would help prevent the sheeting from flying up when it was windy).

Lastly, to make it a little classier (because the sheeting is so thick you can’t see through it), I draped some purple chiffon fabric (that I had left over from my wedding) through the trellis like a Grecian toga. With the entire area illuminated from the market lights I have strung in my backyard year round, my patio now looked like a swanky cocktail lounge! Bingo!

Supplies Needed:

• Thick poly draping (buy enough to cover the area you want to enclose (top to bottom with a little left over to secure at the top and bottom).
• Duct tape (to secure draping)
• 12-15 red bricks ( to secure draping)
  • Optional:
    • Chiffon fabric draping
    • Space Heater
    • Market lights

Total Cost: $30
(not including the purple draping and market lights I already had on hand)

The Finished Product

It’s always stressful opening your home to others. But when it’s your family, it’s ESPECIALLY stressful. Nobody has a filter, and if they don’t like what they see, they’ll most certainly let you know!

I had always been a guest at our family gatherings, but now, I was THROWING one!  What would they think? Would it be chic enough for their tastes? Would they enjoy the decor I had set up, the drinks I had made, and the food I had catered? And to boot, my entire family to come up to Northern CA from Southern CA for the party. It would be a long trek for them to be disappointed.

Well, I’m happy to say the Golden 60th birthday party celebration for my mom was a HUGE HIT! Everyone was very impressed with the decor and the way things were set up. I didn’t hear one complaint – and knowing how open my family is – that was HUGE!

And the most important part is that my mom absolutely loved it. I served her favorite food, had her favorite cake, and decorated the entire house with her in mind. It was a special night that I hope she cherishes forever.

I’d have to say though, that if there was one highlight, it wasn’t the DIY decor. I saved the best surprise for last, and presented her with a super top secret gift during dinner:

She was going to be a GRANDMA! That’s right, I was 8 week pregnant at the time and decided to surprise her and the rest of my family with the big news during the party. AND, this was going to be her first grand baby. If she thought the night couldn’t get any better – well it most certainly did. I haven’t heard the end of it since (and it’s been 2 months since the bash).

But even if I didn’t have a big secret to share, I 100% believe it still would have been a night for the books. And I did it all for around $1000 (for 20 people). That’s pretty sweet if you ask me!

So next time you have a loved one that has a special occasion coming up, don’t shy away from being the one to give them the party of a lifetime. After all, it’s a lot easier (and less expensive) than you originally thought, am I right?