Planning an Epic SURPRISE 30th Beer Bash

On September 16th my husband turned the big 3-0!  Our original plan was to attend the Nicky Jam concert scheduled on his exact birth day-- he had surprised me back in May with these tickets, even after I had insisted my best friend Isis and I could travel to Orlando the following day to see the show. Yet, with his typical selfness character, Sergio got us tickets anyway. This act coupled with the fact that Sergio has shared for 27 years (has happily) had a joint birthday with his sister, inspired me to plan one epic SURPRISE birthday just for him. The party was originally for September 15th, little did we know that Hurricane Irma would laugh at all of our plans and take with her our surprise party AND our evening with Nicky! I was forced to reschedule his birthday for the 30th... 30th birthday on September 30th-- pretty appropriate! 

THE PRE-PLANNING:

With the help of Pinterest, we (the birthday committee consisting of our closest friends) set out to plan a theme for the event. I had been to a number of "Dirty Thirty" parties and wanted something fun and reflective of his "guy" character. That's when we found "Thirsty Thirty" and all the beer themes that went along. 

The invitation was found by chance and it was PERFECT and most importantly FREE! Sergio and I have used Minted for about six years for our Christmas Card and their work is always the best quality. Minted recently launched their digital invites-- the experience is very user-friendly and for a limited-time only (to be exact December 31st)... FREE! You can customize many of the invites-- here's how Sergio's turned out. 

Seeing as how the event was "BEER" theme we thought about purchasing a couple of kegs or even getting a local brewery to attend our party. But after much research and many "nos" from local breweries to do a tasting... we decided to just go to " Total Wine & More" and purchase our beer there. Their selection was IMPRESSIVE and their customer-service superb. We opted to do all craft beers for the drinking and a small 1/6 of a keg for the games! We had all different types of beer-- from Funky Buddha to Napoleon ice cream flavored beer-- seriously all kinds of amazing and interesting flavors. 

With regards to décor, my goal was to have guests feel like they were transported to a cool hang-out space in Wynwood. I worked with My Florida Party Rental , who conveniently had rustic high top tables and stools and matching barrels. You really do not need much, since the idea is to have people mingling and playing games. To stay in theme, Michaels had an array of the metal bins in all shapes and sizes (always make sure to look online for coupons ). I could not believe my luck when I found this "BEER" bin and "BEER" holder (used for silverware) for the party at HomeGoods ... like they were just waiting for me. We wanted our guests to enjoy their beer properly and take a souvenir home, my mother found great beer mugs at the Dollar Tree for only $1 each! The rest of the décor was all about personalization. My dear friend, Stephanie opened up her own Etsy shop ( SDCreationsBoutique ) and her work is simply beautiful. We made sure that everything was in theme and it reflected Sergio-- such as "Sergio's Beer Bash" and "Est. 1987". We even added a sticker to each of the mugs so that they would be in theme too. 

Desserts are always fun and we ordered Sergio’s two-tier chocolate frosted cake from Catalina’s Bake Shop in Pinecrest, FL. The sweets table was complete thanks to the amazing talent of The Cookie Bandit who created cake pops shaped as beer mugs and beer bottles, as well as custom cookies and chocolate covered pretzels! Delish! Thank you both for capturing my vision.  

Thank you to my family and friends who helped store so many of these goodies prior to the party! It really helped keep the secret... 

DAY OF EVENT

The Day Of is always the hardest... especially when you are having the event at your house and you don't want your spouse to suspect. Leading to the event, our friend Nelda suggested that we should play off having a girls day. This is something I pretty much do all the time. She said to get Sergio to go along with getting him out of the house we should encourage him and Nelda's husband, Brian to hang out and go watch the infamous "IT" movie (using the excuse that we girls were troo terrified to watch said movie). Well with that in mind, he headed off to the movies at 4:30PM.

Once they left, the real work began! Luckily the house was clean, using the excuse that Nelda and Brian would be having dinner with us after the movie... this allowed me to have him help out even for his own party (hahaha). I ran to my parents to pick up the following: (1) the paper décor; (2) the decorated mugs; (3) the centerpieces (which consisted of yellow crinkled paper similar to beer and white tissue paper similar to foam); (4) many of the bar food (peanuts, pretzels, chips, etc.); and (5) the desserts. Let's just say my mom was amazing to have everything ready just to load... everything was in our car within 5 minutes. But here is when everything got interesting-- my car battery DIED! Like for real... can you imagine not being able to start your car and wondering holy crap I have less than three hours to pull this off! Luckily, Honda of Palm Beach was amazing and even FaceTimed me to show us how to navigate my complicated car... thankfully my future brother-in-law was home and rushed to get a new battery installed for the party. 

Once home, I was fortunate to count with the help of Sergio's family, Nelda, Papo and Isis. They all helped me pull this off... 

THE BIG REVEAL

One of the main reasons why surprise parties get discovered before its time is due to all the cars parked outside, well to start off with we barely have too many parking areas on our block and I really did not want to be a bother to my new neighbors. I also wanted Sergio to be able to get home with no suspecicions, seeing as how my office is 3 minutes away from my job and there is plenty of parking there, we decided to create our own "shuttle" service. My sister's friend took my "Monster Truck" (a Honda Pilot) and after guests parked at my office would transport them back to our house and then of course back to their vehicle once the party was over. (Now you understand also the dilemma with the car battery?!)

Thinking that he was returning back home to meet with Nelda and I, Sergio arrived to the house at around 8:15. With nothing out of place (even the hired cop moved his car to the end of the road), he turned the keys to our home and was pleasantly surprised to see over 30 of our closest friends and family waiting to celebrate him. His face says it all! 

THE GUESTS’ SURPRISE

Part of planning a party is keeping an element of surprise for your guests. When planning for our Wynwood experience, I kept thinking what type of food would be in line with our event and would also be loved by Sergio and our guests. Thanks to the suggestion of my cousin, we decided on having Ms. Cheezious cater and when you are as EXTRA like me... you get the FOODTRUCK! Our guests loved the experience and Sergio kept loving all of his surprises! 

FINAL THOUGHTS

It was so much fun planning Sergio’s 30th Surprise Party. Thank you to all our family and friends who helped us keep the secret and enjoy his special day. Thank you too for all those who donated to the Red Cross in lieu of gifts— we raised $500 for Hurricane Irma Relief. 

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