Princess Birthday Party Ideas For A Little Girl

Birthday Party Ideas For Your Little Princess

Whether your little girl is obsessed with Elsa and Rapunzel or a classic princess character like Snow White, throwing a princess party may be just the way to make their special day a single event worth remembering. The magic of a princess party is hard to beat when it comes to the delight of many young girls and the memories you can build with the absolutely best princess party may be well worth your hard-earned money!

Our family is not big on birthday parties. We don’t typically plan a grand special event for birthdays but do gifts at home and a dinner and cake celebration with grandparents and close family. However, this year we decided to make our middle child’s fifth birthday an extra special occasion with a birthday party featuring a princess theme. Her birthday often gets extra neglected sandwiched in between her sisters and we wanted to create a really special day for her to be celebrated individually. I like to think that we created a bit of a magical experience for all of the little party guests who came despite the fact that we held the party in our backyard on a tight budget – so I thought I would share here a few of our princess birthday party ideas in case it helps anyone along in the planning of your own amazing event!

I don’t know if expert princess party planners are a thing amidst the world of professional party planners but I’m certainly not one of them. However, I had a few princess party ideas that I think made our event a fun single time memory that our daughter will hold onto for many years and I wanted to pass them on to you!

In this post I will share with you how we invited party guests to our special day, what party supplies we used on a budget, how we decorated our backyard party space, which activities we included in our party, and how we helped each guest make a grand entrance by transforming them into a princess party character.

There are so many party options out there and our event was relatively simple and low-budget, but it’s my hope that some of our ideas can help inspire you to have an extra sprinkle of magic present at your own event.

(Note: This post includes affiliate links which means if you purchase from one of my links I make a commission on your purchase – at no additional expense to you! Read my full disclosure here.)

Ideas For Princess Parties

1. Invitations

There are a ton of options to get cute princess party invitations, but did you know that you can create your own on Canva for free? Even if you’re not a graphic designer, Canva has premade templates for party invitations that are free and really easy to modify with your party details or even change out pictures. I used a Canva template as the base for our party invitation. However, since I enjoy graphic design, I did make quite a few major changes to it – but you don’t have to! Check out Canva.com for all of the template options. Designs then just need to be printed.

I downloaded my design as a pdf for print and printed several onto cardstock with my home printer. You can also send them somewhere like Staples to get a nice high-quality print and cut. I ordered cheap 5×7 white envelopes on Amazon then to send them off in.

If you want nothing to do with designing your own invitation you can also find some really cute customizable options on Etsy for your princess party!

2. Party Supplies

When it comes to party supplies, I sincerely believe that you don’t have to be lavish to create an event that is memorable and cute. However, we did purchase several decoration items, craft materials, and some dress-up elements for the party guests. Below is a basic list of the materials that I purchased.

Balloons (I probably used about three 12 packs of pink, purple, gold, and white colored.)
Ribbon Tassles (I had two sets that I mixed together – one white and one pink.)
Gold Foil “5” balloon (check your size when you get one of these! I wish mine had been bigger.)
Happy Birthday Banner (I actually found mine at a yard sale but there are a ton of cute options in party stores or on Amazon.)
White curling ribbon (to tie and hang balloons with.)
Castle tablecloths (We found cheap disposable princess ones at our local party shop!)
Princess napkins (Again, our local party shop had some really cute ones!)
Small pink cake plates
Plastic forks
Purple paper cups
Paper tiaras (You could also get some more legitimate dress up ones like these on Amazon. I got mine at a local party store.)
Princess skirts (I made my own as these can be a bit pricey – see my notes below under guest dress-up. However, there. are some options on Amazon that are more of a tutu style.)
Princess wands (We found some at our local party store but there are also some great options for these on Amazon!)
Pony beads (These are available at most arts and craft stores and are relatively inexpensive.)
Pony bead cord (We got fun glow-in-the-dark cord at our local craft store that was age appropriate for 3-6 year olds.)
Cake
Candles
Snacks (We just had pretzels and popcorn with the cake and freeze pops later in the party.)

3. Decorations

We put together a pretty basic set-up for our princess party and while I felt like I was doing a ton of decorating, in the end it was pretty simple – but cute. Since our party was in June and our house is not exceptionally large I wanted to keep most of the party outside. We pitched our white canopy tent to keep food and activity tables under and that became my primary focus for decorating. Since we have a front porch I hung bundles of three balloons on each porch post for guests to see as they arrived and I put a few bundles of balloons at the top of our backyard trampoline entrance, but otherwise all of my decoration was concentrated on the tent.

To make our white canopy tent into a cute princess hub I hung a simple happy birthday banner across the front of the tent. I then hung ribbon tassels down each side of the tent at the top and tied bundles of three balloons to each corner. In the back corner I tied a foil “5” balloon to set with a chair for gift time and placed a small table by the chair covered in a princess bed sheet for a tablecloth. Inside the tent I placed two folding six foot tables and taped securely a disposable princess table cloth over each one.

A lot of balloons can go a long way! We didn’t have a lot of decorations but it ended up looking quite “princessy” and very festive.

4. Party Activities

Our party guests were ages 3-6 years old so we kept the formal activities pretty basic with a lot of time for free play. When each little girl arrived we dressed them up and they each made a necklace and/or bracelet with the beads and cord at the tables. We had a brown grocery bag labeled with each child’s name that they could keep there dress up things and bead crafts in to take home with them so that things didn’t get scattered everywhere. When each child was done with the bead craft they had free play time until all of the guests had arrived and completed their craft. (We have a big trampoline that occupied them for free play time but any backyard toys would have worked.)

After a short period of free play time we brought out the cake, snacks, and drinks and sang to the birthday girl. Then immediately after cake time we had her open her gifts. (The goal was to keep all of the formal activities near the beginning of the party since 3-6 year old kids can only sit still for organized activities for so long.)

When gifts were finished all of the kids took off their dress-up clothes and changed into swim suits! We had free play time with a water table, kid’s pool, and kid’s splash pad for the rest of the party. After about an hour or so of water play time we brought out freeze pops for them each to enjoy as well.

5. Guest Dress-Up

One of my favorite parts of our princess party was the guest dress-up! When each little girl arrived we offered them a princess skirt to wear, a crown, and a wand. They all looked so cute running around as little princesses and it also served as our party favor since they each got to take home all of their princess items at the end of the party. We had one little boy cousin who attended the party as well so I made him a sword out of cardboard, duct tape, and tin foil so he wouldn’t feel left out of the dress-up!

(I like to sew at a very amateur level so I decided to take on making each of the skirts myself. It was time consuming, but very cost effective! I purchased three colors of tulle and matching super cheap fabric for the base of each skirt. I cut long rectangles of each fabric out and hemmed three sides of the base rectangle for each one. I then pinned together the tulle and base fabric, hand sewed a gathering stitch across the top of both layers, and gathered the skirts to about a 21 inch width. I then pinned and sewed on some glittery ribbon over the gather at the top. Lastly, I folded over the glitter ribbon and stitched it down to completely hide my unfinished ends at the top of the skirts. Each skirt then had excess ribbon hanging off of both ends that could be used to tie it around each child. Because all of the skirts were hand-tied with the ribbon in the back they fit great on a wide range of different sized children!)

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Whatever your style of party I think that with a few special ingredients you can throw a fun party at an incredible value. I feel like we did and I hope that some of our ideas can help you to build the perfect princess party for your birthday girl!