Please join us Saturday, July 25th for Brayden’s 5th Birthday Party! No gifts please.*

*Why no gifts? For our fellow parents, we know how exhausting it would be to buy a new gift for some random kid every week. Think of this as our gift to you. No need to buy anything for Brayden. You certainly don’t know Brayden well enough to know that he’s longing for a Mandalorian LEGO set, and that such a gift would catapult your child into the upper echelons of Brayden’s affections and perhaps cement a lifelong friendship. That information is irrelevant due to our no gifts request.

It is popular these days to say “no gifts” on invitations. But we don’t do what everyone else is doing just because. We’re not going to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge and we are certainly not going to enroll Brayden in whatever a “ninja class” is simply because his best friend Riley takes them. Why is each 30-minute class $45? Anyway, if you want to get him a gift certificate to the ninja class place, he wouldn’t kick that out of his race car bed. But seriously, no gifts are necessary.

We also say “no gifts” because it makes us sound non-materialistic, which, for the most part, we are. Unless it comes to the $75 eye cream that I, Brayden’s mom, really want—or the $1800 OLED TV Brayden’s dad is drooling over. We’re not suggesting you get us these things—the sticker prices are ridiculous. $75 for a 0.3 oz eye cream? Who are they kidding? That being said, we have set up a GoFundMe for these items and a few other things on our public Amazon Wish List. And aren’t these birthday parties really about celebrating the parents who work so hard to make Brayden’s childhood fantastic by doing stuff like putting together this Star Wars-themed birthday party despite not owning a single Star Wars LEGO set… yet?

If you don’t get us any gifts though, that’s completely cool. We don’t have room for them in our tiny apartment anyway. Especially anything PAW Patrol or PJ Masks-related. If you get him those things, know that they will be exchanged for something Brayden really wants, like a Yoto. If you aren’t familiar, it’s a portable music player that doesn’t have a screen. Why are they so expensive? Seriously can we get him a Walkman and call it a day? If any of Brayden’s grandparents want to get BrayBray the Yoto, we are cool with that. But really no one should feel obliged to get him anything. Come for the free cupcakes and coffee, stay for the engaging conversation about kindergarten enrollment! But here’s a link to that Yoto player if you want to check it out.

Okay, we know what you’re thinking: what if you don’t bring a gift and then you arrive at the party and so many other people have brought gifts that there’s an entire table filled with them and you are like “WTF? They said ‘no gifts.’ Now I look like an a-hole for being the only one to not get Brayden a gift, even though I followed the friggin instructions.” To that we would say, yes, that is a risk you take by following our clearly stated no gifts policy. If you can’t tolerate that level of social embarrassment (and if so, we completely understand) please check out the registry Brayden made for the express purpose of saving all you rule followers from ending up in the above Trauma-Rama scenario.

Truly, there is no pressure to bring anything! Unless you make so much money that you just don’t know what to do with it. We’re looking at you, Uncle Steve. We know you are sitting on Nvidia stock and three different beachfront properties. The least you could do is get Brayden a Woom bike (green, please!) or a down payment on a house that would fit more stuff so we could start accepting gifts at Brayden’s 6th birthday party.

Please RSVP by July 12th. And remember, no gifts! Except for you, Uncle Steve.