The Kids’ Birthday Party Has a Dress Code No One Talks About

Getting dressed for an adult birthday party is something I understand. There are context clues. The time, the place, the people. Dinner at someone’s apartment calls for a different shoe than drinks at 9 p.m. (Also, I will probably not be there because my bedtime is 9:30.) A Saturday brunch, I can figure out. A kids’ birthday party? There’s a surprising amount of gray area.

I’d been to a few before having my daughter and don’t remember thinking particularly hard about what I wore. Then I threw her first birthday and thought about it way more than I expected to.

First birthdays are weird because the person whose birthday it is has absolutely no idea what’s happening. My daughter took a nice little stroller nap during hers while we had lunch and wine at a restaurant with flowers and mostly adult guests. This was obviously not the same situation as a five-year-old’s birthday at Chuck E. Cheese.

I wanted her to look cute and I wanted to wear something that would photograph alright. I did not want matching mommy-and-me outfits. I also didn’t want to look like I had gone out and bought an Outfit for My Daughter’s First Birthday, even though I had obviously spent a lot of time thinking about what I was going to wear.

Julia Gall, a stylist, mom, and friend, told me she reads the host as much as the invitation. If the mom throwing the party is someone who happily pushes a stroller in heels, she’ll give her a look. If she’s usually in a sweat set, that tells her something too. This makes sense to me. It’s what we do when we get dressed for basically everything else anyway.

And now that I seem to have one of these on the calendar every Saturday for the rest of eternity, I’ve realized the invitation only tells you so much. The rest requires a little interpretation.

The Very Themed Party

I love a theme. I do not, however, think a theme requires a costume. Princess can be pink. Garden party can be khakis, a white T-shirt, and a barn jacket. Cowboy can simply mean denim. You’re acknowledging the assignment without becoming part of the entertainment.

Julia is more enthusiastic about dressing to the theme. “People put a lot of effort into a theme, and it’s a sign of appreciation to acknowledge it,” she says. Although hers comes with a very good fashion POV.

For her son’s bug-themed first birthday, she found a butterfly-print Tory Burch top on The RealReal and a ’90s science T-shirt covered in bugs on eBay for her husband. His second birthday was a kite-and-pinwheel party in a windy park, so she wore a primary-colored Marc by Marc Jacobs skirt she’d had since high school. For an apple-picking party the next year, she wore Junya Watanabe patchwork jeans with a plaid Chelsea Mak top. Looking at the pictures, I understand why she commits.

The First Birthday (Versus the Fifth Birthday)

The age of the birthday kid might tell you more than the invitation does. A first birthday is largely for the adults. I say take advantage. At my daughter’s, some guests wore jeans and others wore garden dresses. I landed somewhere in the middle in an Altuzarra Lydia dress and Bally fisherman sandals. Wear the dress, the skirt, even the little heel.

Laurel Pantin disagrees with me on the little heel. “I honestly think casual is always the move for a birthday party,” she says. Even in L.A., where kids’ parties can occasionally veer into cocktail-dress-and-heels territory, she refuses to be swayed. “I would never, ever wear heels.”

A few years later, you’re dealing with kids who are actually participating in their own parties. There might be a bounce house. You might end up on the floor. Someone will probably spill something on you. This is when I’d go with pants, a sweater you can tie around your waist, and shoes you would not wear to the 9 p.m. birthday drinks situation. Laurel’s version is “high sport pants and a sweater or button down,” which feels about right.

The Party You’re Hosting

If you’re throwing the party, I think you get to wear what you want. You planned it, ordered the cake, figured out the food and the nap schedule.

You do, however, have to be able to host in it. Can you bend down? Pick up your kid? Carry the cake? If yes, I think you’re fine. I spent way too much time worrying that I was too dressed up for my daughter’s, and, looking back, I really didn’t need to.

If you don’t want to wear a dress, Laurel makes a good case for a button-down. “It can look casual or slightly more pulled together, but never fussy or uptight if you leave it untucked and open.”

The Shoes-Off Party

You can put together a great outfit only to arrive at a play space or someone’s apartment and find out the shoes are coming off. The ballet flats that were doing a lot of the work are sitting in a pile by the door, and everyone can see the mismatched socks you grabbed that morning.

This is partly why Laurel wears Birkenstocks to kids’ parties a lot, although she admits that might just be “an L.A. thing.” You do not need to plan an outfit around your socks, but if there’s even a chance it’s a shoes-off situation, maybe give them a second thought. And definitely don’t wear the pants that only work with a two-inch heel.

For the Littles

Because they can follow the theme, too.