Every adult likes to get an invitation to a birthday party, and adults like to throw them too. Themed parties, fancy dress parties, black tie affairs and milestone parties are all fun. Here are a few birthday invitation and birthday party ideas that you might like to use for your birthday party or a friend's party to give it extra spice, novelty and excitement.

Birthday Invitation Ideas

There are plenty of opportunities for a little fun at the birthday honouree's expense when sending out birthday invitations. First you have to offer to do the invitations on behalf of the honouree. Then the fun can begin. A photo of the honouree at school, or dressed in suspect fashion for a night out, or posing on the beach. They can all form the basis for great birthday invitations. And of course, if you have the computer know-how, photographs can be touched up and altered using programs like Photoshop. Ask around to see if you know anyone who might be able to help with the high tech stuff. Otherwise, there is always the teacher's favourite, cut and paste!

Memories

A good idea for surprise parties is to compile a photo album of old photographs which can be presented as a special birthday present at the party. This will take a bit of organisation in advance. A nice idea is to have guests write some comments under the photographs, the more humorous the better. Or you can go one further and have each guest design a page of the book. In this way, each page will be different, which makes for a vibrant and fun gift. Some people put in photos, others write poems, others songs, and some attach bits of memorabilia. These are just a few ideas that you can give the guests in advance if they are unsure what to do with their page.

Milestone Years: 40, 50, 60, 70 etc

Milestone Birthdays can be great fun. An idea that works well as a semi surprise party is to offer to prepare the birthday invitation on behalf of the birthday honouree, and then to send out invitations made up like an obituary. Use a black and white picture of the birthday boy or girl in their younger years. Make the obituary as funny and warm as you can, but take great liberties with factual information, and have the deceased die in as ridiculous a manner as possible, but have the death in some way fitting with the person's interests. A golfer dies on the golf course, attacked by squirrels on the 18th green. You get the idea. Then you can have each guest write their own obituary for the deceased, which can be read out at dinner. You can have pall bearers for the cake, a 21 cap gun salute, guests could be primed to wear black arm bands or black party hats, and any other funny idea you can think of. The key is that the surprises keep coming all through the party.

A Themed Party

Themed parties are not just for kids. Adults love them too, so you could arrange one based around a special interest. As with all themed parties, every aspect of the party from the birthday invitations, the decor, the guests' mode of dress, should reflect the theme. You can give prizes for costumes, and have all sorts of associated games. The old favourites like musical chairs can work as well for adults as for kids. So get in touch with the big kid in you and hold a great birthday party!