In the UK people celebrate coming of age at both 18 and 21. Eighteen is the age at which you can vote, get married without consent, sign contracts and, most importantly for celebrations, drink alcohol. It marks the time when teenagers are regarded legally as adults.
The reason that a 21st birthday is also celebrated is that, until 1969, 21 was the age at which all these rights came into place. Until the 1950s there were “coming out” balls for single upper class ladies once they have reached marriageable age, approximately 18. This was the start of the London “season” and these debutantes were introduced to the monarch in their first season.
Most people now celebrate both occasions, with the 18th tending to be the bigger family party, probably because the teenager is still living at home and it is a chance to all meet together before they leave home to go to University.
18th birthday parties are not easy to organise: firstly there is the issue of alcohol – if your child is one of the oldest in the year many of their friends cannot legally drink alcohol; secondly many venues will not hold 18th birthday parties; thirdly most of the guests will be teenagers, so there is the risk of uninvited guests, noise, drunkenness and mess. We have had a plethora of 18ths in the family over the last couple of years, including my daughter’s, so I thought I would share these tips based on my own experience with you:
1. Ask your son or daughter how they want to celebrate – not all of them are party animals, so they may prefer a trip to a theme park with friends or tickets for a gig. If most of their friends are already 18 they may want to go out on the town, that’s fine – if you want a family get together too, book a local restaurant for the family.
2. Check out local venues – understandably many venues do not like 18th birthday parties, mainly because of licensing laws; just because it is a private party does not mean they can sell alcohol to under 18s. However they are more likely to allow the booking if it is a family party. My daughter’s was at a local golf club and my nieces’ in a private room at a Pub and both of them were family parties. Guests were mainly family, friends and work colleagues, with just the closest friend group present – perhaps 20 with partners.
3. Send out formal invitations – this helps in that you have a formal list of who is invited, it takes away the informality of invitations going out by social media and getting passed on in an uncontrolled way. My daughter did not want to send a blanket invitation to the whole class, – by sending out invitations as a parent it was a tactful way of limiting the friends who were invited.
4. If you send out formal invitations you are more likely to get a formal reply, which helps for catering purposes. Teenagers are notorious in saying they might come, or turning up for a short time and then “going on” somewhere else.
5. Invite their friends’ parents – over the years friends’ parents have probably seen a lot of your children. Having them at the party is a way of saying thank you and also is likely to make the teenagers behave better.
6. Have some entertainment – if you have a band or karaoke the teenagers will probably drink less and be less likely to get bored and start causing trouble.
7. Have a theme – not totally necessary (unless you have my daughter who always wants a theme!) but it does help break the ice between family and friend groups and make it memorable. We chose a Musical themed party - I was desperate to be an embarrassing mother from Mama Mia – but other suitable themes might be Movies, Harry Potter, Twilight, Vegas or a Rock Concert.
8. Do not have the party at your house. Throughout my children’s teen years we have had small parties at home and in the garden, but I would not have an 18th at home. Even the best behaved group of teenagers are large, boisterous and likely to get drunk rapidly. Twenty-first birthdays are not so tricky. The event is more likely to be organised by the birthday girl or boy and there is not the issue with under-age drinking. Hopefully they have grown more sensible, so even if you do opt for a big family party the issues around venues will not be such a problem. It is well worth having a family party for one if not both of the events, because it is a great opportunity to see the younger members of the family maturing into adulthood.
