How To Plan A Birthday Getaway

Jus a quick note: This post is about the planning process. We’re not planning the actual trip for you and not helping you pack your bags.

We have a lot of 24 hours in … posts, which basically take you through a full day in a new city. We have some for Nashville, Wilmington, NC, Charleston, and more. So, check those out if you’re looking for help planning a trip in a specific city.

And we do have a lot of packing lists to make sure you don’t forget anything.

How To Plan A Birthday Getaway

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Start with a guest list

The most important place to start is deciding who you’re going to invite on this birthday getaway. Everything else is kind of dependent on that.

So, are you going on a solo trip? Is it a couple’s trip with you and your significant other? A couples’ trip with other couples? A family trip? Girls trip with a bunch of your friends?

Who you’re going with determines the flexibility you have with everything else.

Decide on a date

You have to decide who’s going with you before you can decide when you’re going.

It feels nice to say you’re going on a birthday vacation on your birthday, but sometimes that’s just not possible. Group travel means you have to travel around the group’s schedule.

Pete’s dad‘s birthday is in February, but that’s a terrible time to visit Washington DC. It’s cold and not really walkable then.

So, we went for spring break. That was partially because Pete was working in the school district at the time and had spring break off and partially because the cherry blossoms are bloom then and we knew it would be really special to see them.

My parents celebrated their birthday in October, but we’re not going to Japan until July because we’re going with my nieces and nephews who are in school. So, we had to plan our trip around their school schedules.

When we went to San Antonio for my birthday, it was just me and Pete, so it was super easy to go on my birthday. But actually, we went a few days before my birthday and flew home on my birthday. With the time change (Texas is an hour behind North Carolina), I was gypped and had a 23-hour birthday that year.

Fun fact. When we went to Japan for my grandma‘s birthday, we flew back on Pete‘s birthday. Because of that time difference, Pete ended up having a 36-hour birthday. Most of that was spent on an airplane and recovering from jet lag, but still, it was his longest birthday ever.

Choose the type of vacation you want

Some people like to go on vacation to relax. Some people, like me, want to do everything and eat everything and see everything on vacation.

When I was planning our Nashville trip, I figured this would be the only time we’d be in Music City. So, we absolutely wanted to see everything.

And we did. If you see the list of things that we did in Nashville, you’d be shocked.

But, that’s the type of vacation I want. So if it was my birthday trip, I’d pick somewhere with a lot of activities, restaurants, ride chairs, and things to do. It would be filled with sightseeing.

But, the next birthday trip I’m planning for Pete will be at an all-inclusive resort. He wants to relax, sit by the pool with a cocktail, and not have to leave the resort to go out to eat.

So, the next time he has one of those milestone birthdays, that’s what we’re gonna do.

Both vacations are great. It really just depends on the vibe you want and if you want to prioritize new stimulation or relaxation.

Decide on the destination

Now that you know who is going, when you’re going, and the type of trip you want, you brainstorm destination ideas.

If you’re hoping for an outdoors adventure in the winter, skiing in Vermont during winter break sounds great. If you want something filled with family-fun, a Disney cruise during spring break is a good idea.

For something with a lot of nightlife, go with New York City: the city that never sleeps. For music and movie, check out Austin during South by Southwest.

Be mindful of the general activities you feel like doing on your trip and find the best space to do them.

Set a budget

Vacations are expensive. And birthday vacations are a little more expensive because you want to treat the birthday person and make them feel special. And special dinners are more expensive than regular ones.

But, you don’t want to go into debt just because you went on vacation. So, set a realistic budget.

You may get sticker shock from the price tag of some cities, especially if you’re going somewhere popular and staying downtown, like Boston. For whatever reason, Boston has the most expensive hotels in the US. So, for that trip, you may need to set a higher budget than if you traveled to a small town.

So, be realistic about setting your budget. Make sure it includes airfare, accommodations, food, and entertainment. You don’t want to get to your destination and start penny pinching.

I am the queen of being frugal. I mean, my full-time job is as a frugal lifestyle blogger. But, when I’m on vacation, I want to experience where we’re at. So, I’ll let myself eat whatever I want , regardless of the price.

In Nashville, that meant I spent $13 on three Goo Goo Chocolates. Would I have spent that much when I was at home? Absolutely not. But my vacation budget is totally different than my daily budget.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a budget.

When we travel internationally to somewhere with different currency, we allot $100 for each of us per day. We can use that for food, souvenirs, admission, whatever we need to spend for the day. We’re not allowed to borrow money from future days, but we can carryover money from past days.

We do that because we bring a finite amount of cash with us. So, using an envelope system (yes I literally put our money in an envelope) helps us to stay within that very strict budget.

Make a Google Doc

My family loves a good Google doc for planning a trip.

You know that “I excel in the sheets“ shirt for people who love spreadsheets, if there was a Google doc version, I would buy it for my entire family for our next group trip.

But, honestly, they’re really useful.

Google Docs exist in the cloud and anyone who has access to it can view and/or edit it, depending on the settings. So, when we’re going on a group trip, even just the birthday trip to Vegas that my mom and I took a couple years ago, my mom will make a fresh Google doc.

Everyone who’s invited to the trip gets access, and we use it to start filling in the activities that we want to do on the trip.

It helps to get all the ideas written down and to see what other people want to do, what their preferences are, and what they’re anticipating from the trip.

You may not be able to do everything on the list, but it’s a good place to brainstorm. It’s also a good way to see where everyone else is at. Because if one person is typing a lot of late night stuff and barhopping, you know to anticipate those type of evenings. And if someone is putting on a lot of relaxing spa days and couples massages, you know that person is expecting a more chill vacation.

So this gives you the opportunity to flesh out people’s expectations before you leave.

You also want to add everyone’s flight itinerary on it too, so you can all see when everyone is coming and going. That way, you might be able to coordinate travel to and from the airport.

Book your trip

If you’re planning a group trip, it’s much easier to have one person as a point person who kind of wrangles everybody else.

That is a headache and a privilege.

Default to that person when making decisions about things like lodging (Airbnb, hotel, where to stay, etc.). If you’re booking an Airbnb, that person will be in charge of laying out the money and collecting it from the entire group.

So if this is your birthday trip, you should be that person. Don’t put one of your friends in charge and have them chase down your other friends. That responsibility should fall on you.

But besides an Airbnb, or maybe rental cars, everything else should be booked individually. Let people book their own flights, rideshare to and from the airport, etc. You don’t wanna lay out all the cash for someone and then get stiffed and have your birthday trip ruin your friendship.

Make sure that the birthday experiences, whatever they are, are non-negotiables. And explain that to all the guests. That way, you make sure that they have the funds to afford that dinner or book the admission ticket ahead of time. If they miss out on that event, it wouldn’t be catastrophic, but it would be a huge bummer.

Throughout the rest of the trip, you need to build in plenty of time where people are able to explore on their own. You don’t want to make it a requirement that every single second has to be spent with the group. But things like these special event activities really need to be attended by everybody in order to feel like it’s a birthday trip.

Coordinate any decorations/rentals

If you’re going to be celebrating in a common area, like an Airbnb or an event space, you want to make the space feel festive.

When we had a party for my grandma’s 90th birthday, we rented a hall at the Gold Coast hotel in Las Vegas. The staff there was in charge of the tables and linens, but we were required to bring anything we wanted that.

I bought a bunch of party supplies from Oriental Trading that had balloons and the number “90” on them and made sure to pack them in my suitcase before I packed anything else to make sure I didn’t forget them.

If you’re worried about someone forgetting things, don’t put them in charge of the most important decorations. But, a single person doesn’t have to be in charge of all of it. Designate who can bring a birthday crown or special shirt or happy birthday banner. If a lot of people are in charge of one thing, it will be fine if someone forgets something.

Start a group chat

I’ll be honest; I really hate group chats. The last time we went to Japan and we had about 25 people in the group chat and it was a lot of back and forth.

But, it was worse for my cousin who, originally, was going on the trip and then became pregnant and wasn’t able to go. You know where else she wasn’t able to go? Out of the group chat. She was stuck.

But, when I was on a girls trip over the summer, the hostess started a group chat with all of the other girls and that was really nice for me because I didn’t have any of their numbers prior to the trip. So this group text was nice to be able to coordinate timing of things.

After the birthday trip, feel free to delete that text thread and never look at it again. But it is helpful when you’re planning group getaways and don’t want a ton of separate threads with the same conversation.

Manage your expectations

This entire post is to help you plan your trip. Once you get to your trip, you’re own your own. But, I did want to add this last section here because it is a little piece of planning too: manage your expectations.

You can’t do everything you want on your trip. Dragging your friends in and out of every bar in New Orleans’ French Quarter, just to say you did, isn’t fun for everyone. It might not actually be fun for anyone. So just know that what you want to do and what you can do might not be the same thing.

When we were in Nashville, I really wanted to go to a restaurant I saw on Instagram that had a conveyer belt of cheese. It looked like so much fun when I saw it on social media.

When we got to Nashville, though, I realized it was so far from where we were staying, so I had to decide to skip it.

Was I disappointed? Yup. But, it would have taken up a full day of our trip, just to eat some cheese, and it wasn’t worth it. So, I let myself be bummed for a little, but I didn’t let that disappointment ruin my whole trip.

And you have to be that way too. If someone says no to something during the planning, or someone has to cancel unexpectedly last minute, or it rains when you’re there, you can’t let it ruin your trip. You have to roll with the punches.