This summer, Juan and I were having a conversation of the things that would be happening this year. We both turn 30 and our 5 year wedding anniversary is in December. We had the crazy idea to throw a huge party celebrating both our birthdays and anniversary. We didn’t want to do a regular party and chose to do a ‘Back to the 90s’ theme instead. Our childhood was during the 90s, it’s when we discovered gaming, music, and many other things. It was perfect for us and our personalities. While it wasn’t fancy by any means, we wanted to do something cool to share with our family and friends.
When planning the party, we wanted the decorations to be funky, with bright colors and a reflection of the things we liked growing up. We ordered and gathered bracelets, glow sticks, props for a ‘photo booth’, VHS movies, games and more.
I’m bummed that we didn’t took pictures of it, but we had an ‘arcade’ corner with one full size arcade machine (a custom one that my dad built) and our modded Arcade 1Up. The arcades ended up being a huge hit, with people spending a lot of time playing different games.
At the beginning of the party, an ‘intro’ video was shown with commercials that were popular in the 90s, especially here in Puerto Rico. We also compiled a list of celebrities, movies, series and snacks and created little ‘This or That’ videos where people would vote for their favorite.
The tables had mini Rubik’s Cubes, glow sticks, candy that was popular in the 90s, VHS tapes, bracelets and other things. It ended up being super fun and everybody seemed to enjoy the 90s theme. We had asked people when we sent the invitations to dress up 90s related if they wanted to, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that most of them did dress up.
Unfortunately, the party was supposed to last until midnight, but the place we rented lost power at around 10pm and it ended up being a power outage in the area. The party had to end earlier but we were very grateful that a lot of people helped us clean. And even if things didn’t go as planned, we had a blast while it lasted.
I didn’t take a lot of pictures because I wanted to be ‘in the moment’ and enjoy, so I compiled pictures that friends took and the few that we had between Juan’s phone and mine.
It was a great night. We’re already talking about doing something similar for our 35th birthday but something we can do at home, and focusing on the 2000s, the decade that saw our teenage years.
Question Time:
Have you ever done a themed party/birthday?