There are two honest answers to this, and they are quite far apart. The first is how far ahead you should book if you want your pick of dates. The second is how late you can leave it and still have a party. Both are worth knowing.
The comfortable answer: six to eight weeks
At six to eight weeks you can still choose. You can have the Saturday rather than the Sunday, you can pick the time that works with football or dance or the other party half her class has been invited to, and you have long enough to send invitations without chasing anybody.
It also gives you time to change your mind about the type of party, which happens more often than you would think. Plenty of parents enquire about one package and book a different one a fortnight later once they have talked to their daughter about it.
When dates actually go
Weekends are busier than weekdays, and Saturdays are busier than Sundays. Two parts of the year fill up earlier than the rest: the weeks leading up to Christmas, and the summer term from about May onwards, when the weather turns and everyone plans at once.
Half terms are their own thing. Because we can do weekday parties outside term time, a half term week often has more availability than the weekends either side of it, which catches people out in a good way.
The last minute answer: four days
We ask for at least four days' notice. That is not a sales line, it is how long it takes to get products ready, confirm numbers, and get the consent forms back from the host parent and from each guest's parent or guardian. Those forms are how we know about allergies, skin sensitivities and anything else we need to work around, so they are not something we can skip because a party came in on a Wednesday.
So if the birthday is a week on Saturday and nothing is arranged, do ask. The worst that happens is that date has gone and we offer you another one.
What holds the date
A 25% deposit secures it, and it comes off the final bill rather than sitting on top. The balance is due seven days before the party, by bank transfer or cash, and cash needs to reach us before the day rather than on it. Until the deposit is in, a date showing free is genuinely still free, which means somebody else can take it.
That is worth saying plainly, because the most common way a family loses the date they wanted is not leaving it too late to enquire. It is enquiring in good time, thinking about it for ten days, and finding somebody else booked in the meantime.
If she is ill on the day
Nobody plans for a temperature on a Saturday morning. We always try to move the date first, because a poorly birthday girl is not a cancellation, it is a postponement. The full position is in our booking terms, and the short version is that we would much rather run the party a fortnight later than not run it at all.
The school calendar decides more than you think
Before you settle on a date, check three things: the school holiday dates for the year, the weekend of any school trip or performance, and whether her birthday falls near a bank holiday. Half the reason a Saturday fills up is that every family in the same school year is working from the same calendar and reaching the same conclusion in the same week.
If her birthday lands in the holidays themselves, you have more freedom than most. We run weekday parties outside term time, and a Tuesday in the Easter holidays is far easier to book than the Saturday before school goes back.
Booking around a sibling, a wedding or a holiday
Families rarely have one thing in the diary. If the birthday weekend already has a christening or somebody else's party in it, moving the celebration by a week is completely normal, and children mind far less than parents expect. What they mind is the party being squeezed into a morning between two other things.
A party the weekend after the birthday, with the day itself kept small and family shaped, is the arrangement we see work best.
What we need from you once the date is held
Not a lot, and not immediately. The consent forms, the final number of children, the address and access details, and anything we should know about allergies, skin or additional needs. Most families sort all of it in the fortnight before, and we will remind you rather than leave you wondering.
A quick planning order
Pick the date and the rough time first. Book the party. Then invitations, then food, then cake. Doing it the other way round is how people end up with twelve invitations out and no entertainment, which is a stressful place to be on a Tuesday night.
If you already know the date you want, the calendar on our site shows what is booked over the next few months, so you can check before you even get in touch.