I’m pretty sure I’m not the first mama here to have toyed with the idea of not throwing a birthday party at all. I was looking at AirBnB and TripAdvisor more than Pinterest because I was really, really, really THAT close to just booking a flight out with the Wayne and Laurent to celebrate the little one’s birthday somewhere exotic. Just the 3 of us.

But after much contemplation, we thought we’d like to share the special occasion with our family members and close friends, and leave the travelling to some other time.

So I scurried around to find a suitable venue for the party.

Our initial idea was to hold the party at the function room, but we knew from experience, it isn’t big enough to accommodate all our friends and relatives together. We also didn’t want to have the party in 2 sessions because we will likely be very tired by the time we get to the second session and also, there will be additional costs involved for services like decor and photography.

We eventually settled for The Bank Bar + Bistro at One Shenton because we were able to use the indoor and outdoor area exclusive for the party (no rental charge, but must meet a minimum spending) and there is also a small children’s play area to occupy the kids. The package comes with a buffet line and free flow drinks (soft drinks + fresh juices).

They provide quite an extensive menu with very interesting items and we heard pretty good reviews of the food from our guests. I personally love the SIO BAK (roasted pork belly), pasta, prawn paste chicken and grilled fish. One thing to note, though, is that the portion comes in exact number of pieces, so when you order, it will be good to order with a 20-30% buffer. We ran out of food pretty fast and had to order pizza to top up. I feel so bad for some of our relatives who came quite late because the food were mostly gone! 🙁

For the party theme, we ended up with a Le Petit Prince theme (again).

Instead of having the theme in the typical blue and yellow, which was similar to what we did for Laurent’s baby shower, I decided on a white and gold theme instead. While I had a rough idea of how I wanted the decor to turn out, I wasn’t sure I could handle the DIYs on my own (I tend to procrastinate). So I worked with Sprinkie Parties for the party’s decor. All I did was send them some reference photos for inspiration, told them the theme and colours I want for the decor and left everything else to them.

I took the Sprinkie’s Blessed Party Table Decor Package as I already have the very generous Emicakes sponsoring Laurent’s birthday cake so I didn’t need to take a dessert table package. The rest of the ‘dessert’ on the table were made up of off-the-shelf items which matches the colour theme like Garret Popcorn, golden oreos (I was told it’s nicer than the original black ones!), marshmallow, ferreror rocher, Gerber’s puffs (for the little ones!) and apple crumble provided by The Bank.

And speaking of cake. I want to say a HUGE THANK YOU to Emicakes for being so sweet and generous to design such a gorgeous cake for Laurent that matches perfectly with the theme! The time and effort that went into the cake was evident in every single detail. I was quite overwhelmed when I first saw the cake because, to be honest, it was beyond what I imagined 🙂 If you are thinking of customising your cake for a special occasion, do contact Emicakes and have a chat with their friendly sales team and let their designers work out something unique for you!

Last, but definitely not the least, thank you so much to Natsuki Photography for helping us to capture the best moments of the party 🙂 You probably couldn’t tell from the photos, but Laurent was not in a beautiful mood that day (probably from not napping and not being used to the crowd, he fell asleep immediately after cake-cutting). They are great at capturing essence of the event and the beautiful expressions of children 🙂

We are extremely thankful to have been able to share this special memory with some of the dearest people to us 🙂 Our heartfelt appreciation to all the help that you guys have rendered to us in any way during the party, especially my beloved girlfriends 🙂 And we apologise if we had not been a good host in any way because we were so busy running around. We really appreciate how gracious you guys have been! We hope you enjoyed yourselves nonetheless and have some beautiful memories to keep <3