Celebrating in a Pandemic – Birthday Parade

When the pandemic started and we saw someone who did a birthday parade for their kid. As the shut down continued I remember seeing more and more of them. The kids asking me if they could have a parade for their birthday. Never did I ever think that we would still be dealing with no gatherings in July. Celebrating in a pandemic is not something I planned for but like most things asking my friends and Pinterest were life savers.

I didn’t come up with any of this. People have been doing the birthday parades since March. We attended a few and I took notes and copied a lot of what I saw.

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Facebook Group –

The first thing I did was created a Facebook Event for the birthday parade and added people who said they wanted to participate. I decided on early evening on a Saturday. Now that most people are back to work I assumed evenings would be best and 5:00 seemed perfect so people could pass through and go eat dinner.

I also wanted to give them a meet up location so Justin could lead the parade and I wanted them to go a back way to the house so we didn’t block the main street in our subdivision.

Decorations –

This was easy. I had seen a balloon column on Blossom Girl’s Instagram and I knew I wanted that. I called Kerry and Emily and we designed something that was perfect. At the time I wasn’t sure what colors we were going to do so I told them to go with primary colors. Primary colors always seem to be the best for birthday fun.

Cake and Favors –

Knowing that everyone is in different stages with feeling safe in the pandemic I wanted to make sure I could give the guests a piece of cake. I mean cake is the whole reason we go to parties, right? I need to find a safe way to do that and my friend Mandy gave me the idea after attending her daughters birthday parade. I added a fork and slipped a napkin in between the cup and plastic bag. I assembled all of them with my mask on for an extra layer of safety.

I planned to have Flavor Ice pops for the kids as favors but my order was lost by Amazon so boo to that. The ice pops would be ideal to hand out in the heat and then families can go home and freeze them. I am also always in favor of an edible favor because most of us already have too much junk in the house.

Shirts –

The shirts sort of dictated the theme. I wanted something vintage looking and since the kids are into video games these seemed perfect. As always ETSY for the win.

Check out some of our other birthday posts here.