As children's birthday parties get more elaborate, some parents are asking birthday party guests to help cover the costs

Some parents are asking guests to tip at their children’s birthday parties, and they are putting the request on the invitation.

Victoria Perry, a home baker in Inman, South Carolina, described the invitations in a video posted in January 2025. that set off months of argument online, and racked up nearly 50K views. “There is a little spot on the bottom that says, Tipping is encouraged,” she said. One gave a reason underneath. “If you bring your child and they plan to eat and play, please send along cash with your child for the tip bucket to go towards party expenses.”

As children’s birthday parties get more elaborate — and more expensive — the debate over tipping has also taken off. Should someone who invites you to a party ask you to help pay for it?

Charles MacPherson said no. A butler and the owner of Charles MacPherson Associates, a Toronto company that trains butlers and household managers and places domestic staff in private homes, he has written four books on etiquette. “I disagree with inviting guests and expecting them to tip,” he said. “It’s really your responsibility to take care of things.”

On the matter of whether a host can expect gifts or tips, MacPherson separated the two. “I think tips 100 per cent is unreasonable,” he said. A birthday present is traditionally understood, he said, but an invitation does not obligate a guest to bring one.

Victoria Paige has worked in the party business for about 15 years and is CEO of Bibbity Bobbity Princess Parties, a Toronto company that sends costumed performers to children’s parties across southern Ontario. She has never seen a tip request on an invitation. “I think that’s the death of celebration.”

At the same time, Paige said tipping itself is not new for performers at children’s parties, and she has seen more of it lately. Performers are sometimes tipped by guests who did not hire them. She has seen tip jars at parties too, put out by vendors.

The cost is what has changed, Paige said. When pandemic restrictions, bookings opened like a floodgate. “Every party we went to was so much more elaborate than anything we’d ever seen because people were making up for lost time,” she said. “We had five-year-old birthdays where these kids had never had a birthday party in their whole life.”

Her performers would arrive after a magician and before a ballerina, at a venue the family had paid for. There were ice cream trucks. There were ponies. “It all had to be Instagrammable,” she said. Before the pandemic those parties ran on paper plates and a dollar store tablecloth.

“Now it is thousands of dollars to throw a party,” she said, and puts it down to parents matching what they had just been to. “That started this trend that no one intended to start.”

Paige has felt the pull herself. She said she spent too much on her own daughter’s first birthday. “I was dreaming bigger because I’d seen more,” she said.

Perry, who has run her bakery for more than six years, said in an email her customers are pulling the other way. “I’ve definitely noticed customers becoming more budget conscious,” she wrote. More are ordering smaller and cheaper cakes, while her own ingredient costs keep rising.

Asking guests to tip is the least common way Perry sees parents handle the costs, and the one she likes least. Parents ask for cash instead of gifts, she wrote, or for contributions toward a larger present or for help covering admission at a venue. “Those situations seem more common and reasonable to me than explicit tipping requests.”

MacPherson is more blunt: “If you can’t afford what you’re trying to do… You need to cut back.”

How often any of this happens is unclear. Perry has come across five to 10 invitations with a tip request over the past two years. “I have occasionally come across them, but they aren’t something I see every day for sure,” she wrote.

MacPherson said he did not expect it to spread. “A few people may do it and so through the world of Instagram they’re going to make it sound like everyone’s doing it,” he said. “I don’t believe that to be true.

“They’re not gonna remember the big fancy cake that they all had to tip for or they will remember it in a negative way,” he added. “Can you believe we went to the party and we had to tip?”

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