HOW TO CREATE AN ENCHANTED GARDEN/FAIRY THEMED PARTY

1. FIND YOUR INSPIRATION
First get inspired, and there is no better place for this than Pinterest. I start by pinning everything to a secret board; food decorations, games/activities – anything of relevance that fits the theme, in this case; fairies.

There is definitely a fine line between being inspired and becoming overwhelmed; this is where mood boards are your friend! Put all of the pictures you really love together in a PowerPoint or Word doc, group the ones that go together like food, table decorations, other decoration ideas etc. It’ll really help you hone in on your idea and decide exactly what elements to incorporate into the party. I soon realised with mine that I wanted to create an enchanted forest feel.

By doing a mood board you’ll also start to see anything that really jars and what you need to cull. For me it was butterflies, they just didn’t go with the forest floor feel the rest of my images were referencing.

Here is my finished mood board for Mia’s party.

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2. SOURCE SUPPLIES
It’s now time to source the supplies! And because you have your mood board you have a guide which is really important to keep referencing. Much like finding your inspiration its really easy at this stage to get side tracked but your mood board will help you keep sight of the overall vision.

eBay, Etsy, party and bargain stores are great for sourcing all your party bits. With eBay the earlier the better, you can get things for a great price but they can take months to ship, so planning ahead is key.

To create an enchanted forest feel for this party there were some essential items I needed;

Moss
Fern / plant stems (fake or real)
Fairy lights
Gum nuts / Pine cones or some other natural elements
Fairies / fairy houses or some other fairy elements (like these signs)
Babies breath flowers
Mushroom napkins

I already had or sourced a lot of the items I needed from my house, as having hosted a few of these events now I’m starting to get quite a stash built up. I like to reuse as much as possible and try to avoid balloons and plastic as much as I can. I also use eco and biodegradable party items, which luckily enough went really well with the forest theme.

3. FOOD
I love to incorporate food into the theme too, and because it takes up a big part of space on the table it makes sense to include it in the theme.

For this fairy party I made;
Birthday cake decorated with forest fruits
Fruit skewer fairy wands
Individual popcorn pots
Individual trail mix pots
Individual hummus pots with a carrot and celery stick
Brownies
Tofurkey and spinach wraps
Vegan sausage rolls
Butterfly fairy bread (clearly I forgot about the whole butterfly thing when it came to the food haha)

4. DRESS REHEARSAL
This might feel like a step you want to skip but I can’t recommend doing this enough.

I always set everything out like it was the party day, put labels of what food will go where and take in the table scape. It really helps me see where everything will go and if anything is missing, it also helps me feel less stressed and rushed before the party.

5. ACTIVITY
This party was for my daughter Mia who turned 4, which means we’ve hit that age where we need to have an activity, and I needed one that was age appropriate. For a fairy party you could paint a fairy house, make flower crowns or a fairy garden, all of which felt a little too old, so I went with a fairy scavenger hunt and designed my own sheet based on this one.

I ordered some fairies and thimbles online, bought some tubes of glitter for the fairy dust and the rest where all easily found in the park near our house, so off we all went, and the kids loved it!