Today, I’m letting you in on my best teen girl birthday party ideas. As a mom of three daughters, I have some great tips to share with you that are tried and true! And you’ll get a behind the scenes look at a party we recently hosted for our teenaged daughter. If that sounds good to you, then keep on scrolling!
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This post is all about teen girl birthday party ideas.
Idea #1: Create a Cool Hang Out Space
Teen girls want to feel grown up. You can give them that experience at your teenager’s birthday party by setting up a cool hang out space that makes your teen and her friends feel special and sophisticated.
Honestly, if you can nail this, the party is 99% planned. The girls will pretty much entertain themselves.
There are tons of birthday party themes for teens that can inspire your hang out space. For my daughter’s 14th birthday, she picked a palette picnic and outdoor movie in our backyard. I must say, it turned out really cute and was a huge hit!
With my teenager’s input, we used lots of bohemian inspired rugs, pillows, and table decor to create a unique dining experience.
Where can you find palettes for a palette picnic? I wondered that myself! While there may be other avenues, I found mine at a nearby hardware store. I happened to notice them stacked outside, and asked the manager if they would sell them, which they did for $5 each. Never know until you ask, right!?
Then for the outdoor movie, we created a backyard living room (repurposing furniture we normally have on our sunporch) so they would have a couch, chairs, and coffee table.
Using cafe string lights, dried floral arrangements, battery-powered candles, and large-scale plants to define the spaces, we created ambiance and aesthetic. Which leads me to the next idea on how to create an amazing teen girl birthday party…
Idea #2: Think Differently About Party Decor
You don’t always have to use traditional birthday party decorations, like balloons and banners, to make a festive party atmosphere. Instead, you can rework a lot of what you may already own or buy new things that can be reused as home decor after the party.
Don’t get me wrong – I love balloons and banners! But sometimes it’s fun to mix it up and try something new. And I think this works especially well for teenager’s birthdays because it can make the space feel more grown up and sophisticated.
I think the key to success with this approach is to make sure your color palette flows throughout the space and have intentional connecting elements, like the dried floral arrangements at my teenager’s birthday party.
Dried floral arrangements were used on the palette picnic table, outdoor living room coffee table, and the copper over-the-table arch. (Which, by the way, was also a super easy and fast DIY out of copper pipe! Let me know in the comments if you’d like a tutorial for how to build it.)
Here’s a video where I show you step-by-step how to create these dried floral arrangements. It’s super easy and a lot of fun!
Idea #3: Turn Simple Food into a Fancy Feast
One of my favorite fun teen girl birthday party ideas is to make simple food fancy. You can do that by decanting everything onto real serveware. In other words, don’t serve anything in the bottle, box, or container it was sold in.
For my teen girl’s birthday party, we served pizza, salad, and chips. Simple, right? Nothing too out of the ordinary there.
But to take it up a level, we took the pizza out of the box and placed it on a large platter to pass around family style. (Tip: Ask your pizza restaurant if they will cut the pizzas into squares. Makes it much more sharable!) Salad and chips were served in bowls and baskets. And we gave two salad dressing options in small glass bowls with pretty spoons.
Idea #4: Serve Unique Beverages
As with the birthday menu, beverages can too be elevated. For the palette picnic, we served sparkling French lavender lemonade in pretty glass bottles.
Sure, we could have mixed powdered lemonade into a pitcher, and that probably would have been fine too. But I’ve found that sometimes it’s these special little details that together add up to making a good party great!
For the movie, we created a beverage bucket filled with lots of different boutique sodas and teas, which we found at our local high-end grocery store. But Target also has a wide selection of non-alcoholic bottled beverages if you prefer to shop there! (And who doesn’t love an excuse to go to Target!?)
Idea #5: Replace Cake with a Dessert Experience
There’s no shortage of teen girl birthday cake ideas out there. However, sometimes it’s fun to skip cake and do something totally different.
At my daughter’s party, we set up a popcorn and candy bar to snack on during the outdoor movie. She picked a bunch of different kinds of candy (think gummies, chocolates, etc.), and we served them in individual containers with spoons. Stove-popped olive oil and salt popcorn was easily made self-serve in a huge square bowl with a scoop.
The birthday guests were able to customize their own dessert choosing from the sweet and salty options. There weren’t many leftovers, so I think it can be deemed a success!
Idea #6: Give Favors to Use at the Party
Party favors for teen girl birthday guests don’t have to be given at the end of the event. You can gift them at the beginning so they can be used during the party, like we did for my teenaged daughter’s birthday.
She chose to give her friends matching puravida bracelets. We wrapped them in jewelry boxes and put one at each place setting. They opened their favors and wore them during the party. Fun, right!?
Idea #7: Set Up an Outdoor Movie
Movies are an easy teen girl birthday party entertainment option. If your party is in the warmer months, try an outdoor movie using a laptop, projector, and screen.
In case you’re wondering, the projector we have is the Jinhoo WiFi Projector. We bought it as a family Christmas gift last year and are happy with it so far.
My handy husband created a movie screen frame out of simple, inexpensive wood to custom fit the screen that comes with the projector. If you don’t want to DIY, there are screen frames available online too!
A girl-power movie is a must at a teen girl birthday party, which made Legally Blonde the perfect choice for my daughter’s outdoor movie showing!
Teen Girl Birthday Gift Ideas
Once you’ve planned the party, there is still the matter of buying your teen girl birthday gifts! Here are a few of my 14 year old’s favorite things she’s received as gifts recently that you can consider for your own teenager. Everything is under $60 – and most under $30!
- Dry Bar detangle brush | 2. Birkenstock Arizona Essentials | 3. Lululemon belt bag | 4. Kitsch gold hair claw | 5. Lululemon Cool Racerback Shorter Length Tank Top | 6. Lululemon Align Bike Shorts | 7. Hydroflask | 8. Mario Badescu facial spray collection | 9. Dry Bar Mini Heated Straightening Brush | 10. Morphe eyeshadow palette | 11. Starbucks gift card | 12. puravida bracelet | 13. Skin Gym facial roller
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[slide-anything id=”2000″]Thanks so much for stopping by today! I hope you found these teen girl birthday party ideas useful and helpful!
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Until next time, cheers!
