How to Throw a 40th Birthday Party on a Budget: Affordable and Easy Ideas

If you are looking to throw a 40th birthday party on a budget, here are some affordable and easy ideas for your favorite guy (or beer-loving gal)! (Source Details at the bottom!)

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40th Birthday Party on a Budget

My husband turned 40 this past weekend! It was a lot of fun, but totally exhausting! It was a three day celebration. Haha! (I’ll be sure to remind him of this when I turn 40.)

Friday was spent with his two older brothers and friends golfing and imbibing at a local dive bar. Saturday was a backyard party at our house, and Sunday was his actual birthday!

I’ve never looked forward to a Monday so much. Shh. Don’t tell him.

With a baby and a three-year-old to take care of, I was looking for some QUICK, EASY, and AFFORDABLE ideas to make his backyard birthday celebration special! Take a look below at my 40th birthday party on a budget!

THEME

I started looking for invitations on Evite.com. I have used them so many times before. They are perfect because they offer tons of options. Lots of invitations are FREE, but you can design your own or choose a premium invitation for a small fee. They even email you FREE thank you notes after your event!

I found a FREE invitation with the theme, “Beers and Cheers to 40 Years!” (They offer this evite for other big birthdays like 30, 50, 60, etc.) This was just what I was looking for for my 40th birthday party on a budget.

Image via Evite.com

PAPER PRODUCTS & OTHER DECOR

After deciding on that theme, I pulled out the black and gold from the evite as the color scheme for the party. In other words, when choosing paper products, decor, and more I used the black and gold from the 40th birthday party theme! I bought black plastic dinner plates and dessert plates along with some black lunch napkins. To add some detail, I got black and gold dinner napkins with “40” on the front and back. I chose gold cups to compliment the black plates and purchased some striped black and white and gold and white paper straws for some fun! I know my husband really appreciated all the little details, like the straws. Bahahaha! I don’t think he even noticed!

PHOTOS

I knew that I wanted to display some old photographs of Brian for sentimental value. I ransacked his family photo albums and bins that he had from college. There were some amazing pictures! I attached them to a door in our kitchen for people to view. (Below is a snippet of the door. )

They were such a hit! People, including me, laughed so hard at some of the pictures above. Nothing like a plaid polyester blazer on a three-year old! These were priceless and a great way to save money for my 40th birthday party on a budget!

Along with old memories, I wanted to capture some NEW ones at the party!

I knew my Fujifilm Intsax Mini camera would be perfect for this type of thing!

If you don’t know what that is, it is exactly like a Polaroid camera! Still not sure? (When were you born!?) You take a picture and the photo is instantly printed via the camera. It takes a minute or so for the picture to develop, but the best part is that you instantly have a printed photo! The camera comes in ADORABLE colors like ice blue (shown below), pink flamingo, lime green, smokey white, and more!

Image via Amazon

You never know what kind of trouble my husband and his friends are going to get into, so I thought it would be funny to get a mugshot backdrop with some photo stick props for people to use when they took pictures!

Image via Party City

CENTERPIECES

To save some money for this 40th birthday party on a budget, I had to come up with some sort of inexpensive and cute centerpieces for the tables.

I already had purple balloon weights that I could use. I knew I could attach some black and gold helium balloons to the weights, but I had to cover them since purple was not part of the color scheme!

That’s when I came up with the idea of creating a beer pitcher out of a clear plastic pitcher and yellow and white tissue paper!

Not only did it cover the purple balloon weights, but it also matched the theme of the party! Instead of buying helium balloons for the centerpieces, I was able to save money by purchasing black and gold balloons, blowing them up myself, and attaching them to some balloon sticks. Click HERE to see the list of the supplies to make my balloon beer mug centerpiece! If you like this DIY centerpiece, you’ll also like the DIY Balloon Centerpiece that I made for my son’s Inexpensive & Easy Superhero birthday party!

I copied the evite wording onto a chalkboard that I found at Michaels for 60% off, and onto the brick on our side porch to keep the theme going strong!

I hope this 40th birthday party on a budget inspires you to plan a party for your husband, son, father, friend or maybe a lady in your life who loves beer! The sources are listed below for your convenience!