Planning a birthday party for my three-year-old daughter: research on party venues and birthday cake
My daughter will turn 3 this September. Until now we‘ve been doing family parties for her birthdays. But because 3 year olds are already social and will play with other kids this year we decided to do friends party.

The question now was whether I should host the party or rent a place for it?
Hosting will be fun and I already knew the theme of the party – Peppa Pig, of course. For this I needed Peppa Pig themed invitations, decorations, plates, cups, napkins, table covers, banner, balloons, party hats. And the entertainment – Monkey Music (ops I forgot we were not in the UK anymore and there was no Monkey Music in Luxembourg). I loved this idea. But our family was already bigger and I was intimidated by the idea of throwing such a party with a 5 month old baby on my hands. Therefore we decided to rent a place.

Party Venue
My next task was to choose a venue for a group of energetic three-year-olds. I did a little research – I compared the different venues, the options they offered and the price. I thought that this info might be useful to some of you, so here it is:

Birthday Cake
And of course we also needed a Peppa Pig cake. I had a list of bakers/bakeries that prepare birthday cakes. With my daughter using Google images we choose what the Peppa Pig cake should look like– here it is:
I then sent the cake picture to a number of bakeries. And here is what I’ve got back:

Please note that Cactus and Fischer offer only photo printed cakes (like the one below from my last daughter’s birthday) and not a 3D one like the one we were looking for.

And now all we needed to do is to choose and book the venue and the bakery for the cake!

PS
I started listing the party venues here as I think this can be useful for future reference. So if you have suggestions please let me know!

Prices correct as of Summer 2014