Sweet Seventeen Cinderella Birthday Party!
My daughter had a Cinderella Party when she was 5 in which she dressed up as her favorite princess and had a wonderful time! When she told me that she wanted to have a Cinderella themed dinner for her 17th birthday, I knew we would need something a bit more grown up than what we had done previously - but still fun and very princess-y!
To create the tablescape, we purchased an old Disney pumpkin carriage (I think it used to hold a child's toy tea set) from a second hand store and painted it gold and white to look more like the real carriage.
To get the horse drawn carriage look, I started searching for inexpensive hobby horses but I quickly found out that they tend to be a bit on the pricey side (especially for a table center piece). I ended up purchasing a couple of 3-D wooden horse puzzles (for $1 each from a local craft store), and my daughter painted them white. Then I glued some feathers to their heads. Now we had our noble steeds to pull off the theme.
To add a royal chandelier, I used some icicle Christmas decorations and white flowers, and bent the ends of the stems to hang them from our dining room light fixture.
Since her birthday is in October, we created a menu that went with the theme and also utilized produce of the season. I like to display a menu at our gatherings, tea parties, and dinners to help create the mood. Usually I will start with something that will be the centerpiece and then decide which dishes will go with it well. I added names of the characters from the story to the dishes, printed off the menu, and used some old scrap-booking supplies to create another element on the table.
Our menu consisted of:
Pumpkin carriage soup
Jacque and Gus' Salad
King's fish
Prince Charming's Potatoes
Fairy Godmother's Sparkling Cider
Royal Lemon Cake
To help create the atmosphere we chose the color scheme of blue, white, and gold. I had some gold pumpkins in my Thanksgiving Decorations and used gold charges with glass plates and champagne glasses. I purchased small "glass slippers" from a local party store (in the bridal shower area) and added a runner of light blue netting with a slight sparkle.Continuing the "Royal Treatment", gold Christmas wrapping paper was used for all of her gifts.
Even though she is seventeen, my daughter still wanted to dress up a little bit. She wore a pretty blue top and some "glass slippers".
