Birthday Party Ideas: A Brainstorm for my 25th Birthday

Listen to Chrystina discuss her 25th birthday party ideas on Episode 20 of the Party Ideas & Logistics with Chrystina Noel podcast, above.

I’ve been stressing out about my 25th birthday party. And you know what, it’s over six months away. I just want it to be awesome, you know? And the last big party I threw was when I turned 21, and that was pretty great. (Remember prom?)

So now, for 25 I have to go all out. It might not need to be better exactly, but it does need to be just as awesome. I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what I want to do and honestly, I’m not set on any idea yet, and that means that no idea is good enough yet. Here are the 25th Birthday Party Ideas that I’ve come up with so far.

Oh, and I decided I would use myself as a paper doll for this post  Thank goodness for wearing short dresses in Vegas, right? (Oh, maybe that’s an idea…) Actually, I just handed this dress over to my 21-year-old sister, because I can no longer rock this dress at 24. Sad, but true.

Have a Sock Hop

I LOVE the idea of having a sock hop.  Down to the thought of renting a big projector and having everybody watch Grease like a drive in movie and then completely rock out to 50’s tunes the rest of the night. Honestly, I’d probably dress like a pink lady before I dressed in a poodle skirt, but this was easier to draw. I just don’t think this will have the same draw that prom did. Although we could swing dance… and Johanna did already offer up the milkshake machine…

Have a 1920s Party

I’ve thrown two murder mystery parties that took place during the 20’s/30’s/40’s, so flapper parties are no stranger to me. And now that the Great Gatsby is back in style – well, actually, that might be the problem – that’s awesome because it means people are getting excited about it, but I now think that it’s actually overdone. Although I could have people sing jazz songs all night… For more details on how to host a 1920s party, you can visit this post. For more information about how to host a murder mystery party, you can visit this post.

Host a Concert

This was probably the cockiest idea I had. I was going to host a concert, almost like a talent show for all of my friends. I was going to open and close the show myself – almost as if to say “TAKE THAT KARAOKE”. I think I’ve decided I’m not comfortable with the idea of MC-ing a concert for my birthday.

Have a Disney Karaoke Night

Who wouldn’t want to dress up as his or her favorite Disney character and then rock out to karaoke songs all night? Well, you see that’s the problem – while about 70% of my friends would have a blast with that, I don’t think the other 30% would be feeling it, and I would feel pretty awkward about that.

Go Ice Skating

There’s an outdoor ice rink in Philadelphia that you can actually rent out. I thought this would be pretty awesome – get some old school music going and just rock out. I figured this might actually be too tame though, and I’d have to look into whether or not you can bring/buy alcohol…

Go Rollerblading

I actually LOVE this idea a lot. Do you know how to get to the closet rollerblading rink from Philadelphia? You either go straight north into a not so great place in town or you stay on a bus an hour until you get to Northeast Philadelphia. Neither one of these ideas is idea. Also, please enjoy that I’m rocking bright green knee socks above.

Have a Tournament

So, I have a lot of different factions of friends. That’s right, y’all, I just pulled the word factions out of no where. You could play basketball, soccer, volleyball, whatever you’d like. So I figured, maybe if I kept them together at first and divided them into teams they could play each other – then get a little alcohol flowing, and then mix up the teams. There would be the coworkers, the church choir, the school choir, the home friends, the engineers, the RAs, the residents, etc, etc. I just don’t know how into sports everybody would be. Maybe there could be cheerleaders.

Go on a Trip

Alright, this option seems the lamest. And I can’t invite everybody I want to invite. And actually, I don’t really have enough friends that are crazy about spending large amounts of money to execute this. So that’s kind of out. Nobody wants to go on a 25th birthday trip alone.

Host a Coyote Ugly Party

Please enjoy the fact that I made my stomach actually smaller than my waist. I kind of look like a Sims character. So, part of me (maybe it’s the Catholic Schoolgirl in me…) has always wanted to dance on a bar. So why not choreograph it… to the exact dance from Coyote Ugly. I bet I have some friends who would drive down from CT for this one. Consider it a sexy flash mob. This is assuming we don’t fall off the bar and die.

After my first set of ideas I realized that it might just be easier to rent out a place to have my birthday party rather than renting a space and then having to bring an event to the space.  So, if you’re looking to rent out a place, here’s the list for you:

Afternoon Tea

For the past few years afternoon tea had been one of my favorite things to do in the winter with my girlfriends.  I thought about renting out a place to do afternoon tea for everybody, but unfortunately the cost was going to be too much for me to justify per person ($40-$50).  And we would probably need to be on our best behavior.  And who wants to do that for their 25th birthday?

Rent a Brewery

There are so many breweries around the Philadelphia area.  They give tours, they have open tasting rooms.  I thought it would be great to rent out one of the breweries and have all of the beer at our fingertips with music playing in the background.  Unfortunately, I never heard back from the breweries I contacted.  Also, they aren’t easy to get to by public transit.

Rent a Karaoke Bar

Yes, we all know that I have a fear of karaoke.  However, there’s no better place to do karaoke than at a place with a live piano player that can account for your mistakes and choose the key of the song dependent on the person.  Unfortunately, the karaoke bar I chose said they were going to be closed for renovations during the time that I wanted to have the party.  Also, I wasn’t sure that it was going to be a big enough space for everybody that I wanted to invite.

Rent Out a Movie Theater

Another fun idea was to rent out a movie theater.  There would have needed to be a theme that went along with the movie – for example Grease and have it be 1950s themed, or Havana Nights and have it be Latin dance themed.  So essentially there was going to be a movie and party component.  I didn’t look any further into this idea though because it didn’t seem social enough and part of me really enjoys when my friends get to meet other friends.

Hire a Band to do a Concert

This is different than my idea in the last blog post of having a concert.  I was actually going to hire a group to come sing for me.  I checked with the Pentatonix (who weren’t nearly as popular as they are now at the time) – and they were FAR too expensive – I would have had to decide then and there to elope one day.  I checked with Vocal Spectrum as well, and unfortunately they were busy that day.  It definitely would have been cool to be entertained for an evening though.

Rent a Speakeasy

This is different than my thought of hosting a Great Gatsby party, although I admit that we would probably dress exactly the same.  Great Gatsby was going to focus around dancing a little bit more and Speakeasy was going to focus a little bit more on the drinks.  The biggest problem with a Speakeasy party for me though was that most of the locations are small (40ish people) and I didn’t want to have to limit the guest list based on the size of the venue.

Host a Speed Dating Party

This wasn’t going to be your ordinary speed dating party.  I was actually going to make my friends speed date each other.  Which sounds crazy, I know.  But it’d be awesome if all of my friends knew each other – because they’re all awesome people.  I was going to tell people they could bring friends as well so that there would be a new mix of people to add to our lives.  PS. That is a bell in my hand.

Host a Trivia Night

This was probably my favorite idea.  I was going to host a trivia night.  I really hate going to quizzo nights.  I can’t remember ANYTHING about normal trivia, nothing.  So I was going to host an evening of Chrystina Trivia.  Things that are jammed up in my brain that are completely and absolutely useless.  And goodness gracious was that going to be awesome – Disney, musicals, and crafting, here we come