Paula Ross: Hi! I am Paula Ross and I am the Co-founder and the Chief Creative Officer, Andy's Parties. I am here to talk to you today about developing a guest list for your childs birthday party. There are several things to consider when developing an appropriate guest list. You want to think about the age of your kid. If you have younger children, often times you are going to have kids in attendance to the party, who satisfy a wide age range and so you want to make sure that you are prepared to accommodate all of those children and their desires and make sure that everybody will have a good time.

You also want to think about whether or not the parents will be attending. Again, if you have younger children, often times many of the parents will come, often times both of the parents will come and suddenly, what was a fifteen child party becomes a fifty person big shindig. Also, you want to think about whether or not your capacity can help all of those people. We will talk about selecting a venue in a later segment, but thats one thing you always want to keep in mind, is how big your party space is going to be.

You also want to think about what theme you are going to select and whether or not that will play into -- whether or not you will be inviting boys or girls or both. At younger ages many of the themes can satisfy both genders, at older ages often times you are going to have parties are just boys, or just girls. Then also, its very important to think about whether or not your childs school or daycare centre, or a preschool has a policy on who you can invite to your party. Often times, its all or nothing. Most schools in the area do have a policy that you have to invite either all of the kids in a childs class, or none of the kids. That way we save on hurt feelings.