Our Little Gator is ONE! (Eliza’s First Birthday Party!)

Photography by the fantastic Jessie Roffer Photography

I can hardly believe that it’s been almost a month since our little love turned ONE!! One is such a milestone for some many reasons: you survived your first year of motherhood (and boy do I have thoughts about that! :)), you’ve made it through so many different stages of development in your baby, and you’ve seen your baby transform from a helpless newborn to a pre-toddler! There are certainly so many reasons to celebrate, and we were thrilled to have a party with our family and friends to celebrate our sweet girl and to thank them for all the love, support, and prayers they have poured into us this past year. Trust me, some of those friends have been on the receiving end of panicked and frantic texts more times that I can count and we are so grateful to them!

We were lucky enough to have the Uber-talented Jessie Roffer capture the day for us (party planning tip #1… have a photographer so you can ENJOY the celebration!!) and I’m thrilled to share her beautiful pictures with you!

THE PARTY:

For the party itself I wanted something that felt like “us” – warm, inviting, low key but still a little boujee – haha! Our theme was “our little Gator is one!” and so we incorporated pink, green, and gator touches throughout. It was simple and sweet to celebrate our darling Eliza!

We decided to host the party at our house, which I loved, as it made set up and clean up so easy. We catered Chick Fil A for such ( always a winner for kids and adults), had a bounce house, cupcake decorating station for the kids, and cornhole for the adults. Drinks were tea, lemonade, beer, wine, and mimosas and the sun was shining on our day!

THE CAKE:

This was probably the most anticipated part of the day! Party planning tip #2… if you live near a Publix, they do a free smash cake for your child’s first birthday with the purchase of a regular cake. this was perfect for what we needed and they even free-handed a Gator on our main cake to match our invitations! Eliza was tepid at first, and kept feeding Rob the cake (so sweet!) but then she literally nose-dived in! It was a hoot!

THE DETAILS:

I knew I wanted a balloon arch on the day to frame our cake smash area, and I found an amazing local arch-maker who also doubled as a party planner for us. She helped me pull everything together (if you’re local please email me for her info!). I absolutely LOVE the arch she created- it was stunning!

I also got some questions on this high chair- it was our photographers. The perfect prop!

Oh the invitations…. they have my heart and we are so grateful to Joyful Southern who created these for us! These were a custom design that she did and she nailed my vision! Eliza has this sweet stuffed Gator pictured here and I wanted to use it as the inspiration for the invitations. Jennifer is incredible talented and after a few DM’s back and forth she came up with these. They were perfection!!

I kept the favors simple and made “Gator Grub” to go- marshmallows + m&ms + Teddy grahams! Easy to whip up and turned out so cute!

A mimosa station because… mama survived year one! ha 🙂

Photography by the fantastic Jessie Roffer Photography

We had the absolute best day celebrating Eliza and are so thankful for everyone who was able to celebrate her with us (near and far!) Cheers to year two!!

Thanks for stopping by y’all! || Gentry