Our daughter turned one! Even writing this, sometimes I still have to pinch myself because it seems almost unbelievable that not only are we parents, but we’re also parents to a toddler now. We don’t take any moment of this for granted. We’re so thankful for her, and we were so excited to celebrate her first birthday surrounded by our family and close friends.
We hosted her 돌잔치 (doljanchi), which I believe translates to 1st birthday feast in Korean. First birthdays are important, I’d argue in many cultures, but in Korean culture, there’s a specific activity included within it that we wanted to make sure we included in our daughter’s party.
Regarding the party, we did a few things differently than we typically would. As someone who normally plans our trips and events for work, I fully anticipated that I would be taking the reigns as the sole planner for her 1st birthday party. It honestly wasn’t until we realized that no one in our family knew how to plan the 돌잡이 ceremony that we realized we probably needed to outsource it to do it meaningfully and accurately. We couldn’t be more thrilled with the outcome and we’re looking forward to sharing some of the details for our party with you in today’s post.
What is a Doljanchi?
A doljanchi, as we shared above, translates to 1st birthday feast. It’s meant to celebrate, like in some other cultures, the significance of the first birthday. Historically, babies didn’t live past a few months, so making it to one year was and still is considered a big deal and something worth celebrating. Similarly, in Korean culture, their birthday is a day that honors the baby’s first year (of many many years) of life on earth, the hopes and prayers for their future, and celebration of the family.
WHY DID WE HAVE ONE
When considering her 1st birthday, my husband and I knew prior to having her that we wanted to have a dol for her as it’s very important in my husband’s culture. Birthdays are very important in my family as well, so we knew that we wanted to find ways to implement both of our cultural experiences into our daughter’s birthday to represent both sides of our family. For our party, that meant including traditional Korean elements intermixed with some more modern ones, and of course singing “happy birthday” in Korean and the Stevie Wonder version.
I think now we know that we don’t have to necessarily have as large of a gathering, but with it being our first and potentially only child (undecided on that as of yet), we wanted to invite as many of our loved ones as we could fit. As you may already know if you’ve been reading our blog for a while, there was one point where we were unsure if we would ever be able to become parents, so each moment and milestone is one we often like to celebrate and acknowledge. We don’t know if we will have another child, so we wanted to make this special so that if we ultimately decide to be one-and-done officially, we have no regrets about not doing it up as much as we could, if that makes sense.
THE THEME:
The theme was Sugarplum Fairy ONE-derland-themed. I didn’t come up with the idea, so I cannot take credit for it, but our planner did an amazing job at listening to what we wanted and developing a theme around that. I told her I wanted bows, but outside of that, I didn’t know what to do as far as a theme, so we were open to whatever she came up with. She took that and found a way to beautifully interweave our wants into the décor. I do not think I would’ve been able to come up with a cuter and more seasonally appropriate theme.
THE DETAILS:
While we will end up sharing more photographs over on our Substack, we thought we’d share some of the details our planner emphasized based on our wants for her party. We appreciate how she took the time to plan everything out so thoughfully.
THE HEAD TABLE (Dolsang)
Princess/Baroque-inspired cake: This cake was inspired by the colors of sugarplum fairy princesses and the elements of a vintage, princess-inspired cake. I love how Kelsey designed the cake and it was incredibly delicious! The cakes was red velvet with cream cheese icing and it seemed like a hit with everyone there. The cake was so good that I’ve considered ordering the cake the exact same way, but smaller, just to eat.
Custom cookies: We had a dozen of cookies that were made with custom designs to go on what our planner called the head table, which went in front of the backdrop. Some cookies at a Korean emblem on them, hanboks, snowflakes, bows, and more. They were so cute and on theme!
Bow cake pops and cupcakes: For our cake pops and cupcakes, we had them in a variety of flavors and they also went on the head table. There were chocolate and vanilla cake pops, and lemon cupcakes.
Candy: For the kids, (and kids-at-heart), we had a mini candy bar where they could get bags made with little candies in them.
Custom name sign: There was a custom-name sign that included her name and her Korean name on it, which we loved the suggestion of because we plan to add it to her nursery, but it also made for a nice addition to the head table.
Korean traditional treats and items: There were items on the head table that you would typically find at a Korean birthday party and a number of the items have a special meaning to them. For example, yarn is added to signify a long life and good health. Then you have treats such as dduk (rice cake) such as gaepi-tteok and red bean gyeongdan, figs, and dates which symbolize a happy future and life. Other items came be added but because ours was more of a modern version, we let our planner fully decide the items for the table.
Bows: To continue to incorporate the bows, she added them to the napkins as napkin ties, the candles, the backdrop, and other little decorative elements, which we loved.
CUSTOM ARCH AND BACKDROP
The backdrop was one of the main focal parts of the decorations. They did an incredible job and many of our family members commented on the arch and how cute the added bows were. The balloon decorator allowed us to take a couple of the bows to keep for her keepsake box, which I thought was really nice.
Doljabi Items –
A huge part of the birthday party is the ceremony called the doljabi, where the item(s) that the baby chooses is supposed to indicate what they grow up to do in the future. Of course, it doesn’t necessarily predict what they’ll do (my husband picked two items and works in an unrelated field), but it’s something fun and is tradition. It was really special and a nice way to celebrate her half-Korean heritage. This was on another table that we had that had pictures of her, pictures of us and instructions on how to play the game.
Placemat Coloring Pages
For the kiddos at our party, our planner printed out these coloring book pages for them, which I thought was such a thoughtful touch! We are coloring one for our daughter to be able to put up in her bedroom or for her keepsake box.
PARTY FAVORS
For our “favors” we decided to go a traditional route and give our guests dduk to take home with them. We also allowed guests to take home bags of candies of their choice if they wanted to. It’s something that is typically handed out at family events on my husband’s side of our family, so it was something that we wanted to include for her party as a parting gift for guests.
Food
Since we wanted to organize it as much as possible around naptimes, we decided on a brunch instead of a dinner or a late lunch. Our guests kept stating how much they loved the food and it was really good. We joked that we may end up going back there annually for her birthday just to eat at the restaurant.
Overall, we’re incredibly pleased with how everything turned out. It was a beautiful day and it was wonderful getting the opportunity to spend time with our close friends and family celebrating our little girl.
