How to Celebrate Your Golden Birthday (2024)

What is a Golden Birthday?

Your golden birthday is when the date of your birth coincides with your age. For example, if you were born on October 8, your golden birthday took place when you turned 8. If you were born on December 21, your golden birthday took place when you turned 21. Hopefully, you haven’t missed it, but if so, you can always say it’s a belated celebration. While you might feel like your golden birthday is just like any other birthday, we believe in taking every opportunity to celebrate and make every occasion special. With that in mind, here are a few of our favorite ideas on how to celebrate a golden birthday.

All That Glitters is Gold

For your golden birthday, you have got to up the shine factor. Embrace the diva inside and pick an outfit to wear that sparkles, whether it’s a sequined dress or a tux with a glittery tie or shimmering lapels. If you really want to stand out on your golden birthday, ask your guests to stick with neutrals, such as all black, for their outfits.

If you’d rather have the decor do the shining, pick golden dishes and flatware. Dress up tables with napkins and tablecloths that have gold flecks or sparkles on them. If you can, hang up a shimmering disco ball from the ceiling. It’s a theme party, so you may as well lean into it.

Another way to bring out the shine and glitter on your golden birthday is to pass out sparklers. Give each of your guests a sparkler when they arrive (unless your guest is a child or an adult who can’t be trusted with fireworks). As the time to sing “Happy Birthday” approaches, have people go around to the guests to light the sparklers. Here’s a hot tip to avoid burning your house down: have buckets full of sand for guests to extinguish sparklers in after the song.

Pop Some Bubbles

A golden birthday is sometimes called a champagne birthday, so it’s a great excuse to bust out the bubbles. Pour champagne (from France), Prosecco (from Italy), Cava (from Spain) or sparkling cider (from America).

No champagne-themed party is complete without a toast or two. You can also ask your parents, siblings, close relatives, or loud friends if they want to give a toast. Depending on who you ask, you may get roasted instead of toasted, so be prepared.

Not the shy type? Feel free to raise a glass or two to your guests to thank them for coming out to celebrate your golden birthday with you.

Break Out the Ice Cream Cake

There are millions of ways to decorate an ice cream cake for your golden birthday. Try a gold-themed OREO® Dessert Charcuterie Board, gold sprinkles, gold candles, a golden cake stand, gold frosting or glittering cake toppers. Toppings don’t even have to be gold as long as they sparkle.

Dance the Night Away

If you’re going to hang up a disco ball to add some glimmer and shine to your party, you might as well leave plenty of room for a dance floor and ask your guests to dance the night away. When choosing your playlist for the party, pick songs from that most glittering of decades, the 1970s.

Celebrate Pint-Sized Golden Birthdays

Golden birthdays aren’t just for adults (in fact, golden birthdays only go up to 31 years since that’s the maximum amount of days in the calendar month). Kids love to celebrate. If your little one has a golden birthday coming up, there are plenty of fun ways to commemorate the occasion.

Try a golden birthday-themed treasure hunt: hide gold foil-wrapped chocolate coins and candy-jewel ring pops around your house or yard, then send the party guests off to find them. Kids love dancing too, so you could also throw a dance-themed party for the under-12 set. Make it a dance-off where the best dancer gets to take home a gold medal.

Top off a golden birthday celebration for people of any age by serving slices of ice cream cake. Pick a party-sized cake to serve a crowd or a round cake for a smaller gathering. You can dress up the cake to match the theme of your birthday by adding gold decorations or golden sprinkles to the top.

Image credit: Delicious Made Easy