Baby - Dol - First Birthday

Rob Jr :: Korean First Birthday "Dol"

Photos & Words By: Tina Chung



 
We wanted RJ's dol theme to be simple and elegant for us, but fun for him. So we chose a color theme of red and light blue, and a theme of a red balloon against a blue sky kind of grew out of it. Thanks to help from our friends and a lot of DIY work months ahead of time, our vision for the party came to life and we all had a great time, including the birthday boy!

My parents brought up dduk from Philly since there really isn't a place around Boston to get something as pretty as what they do down there. They got the traditional rainbow dduk cake as well as a platter of assorted pieces, all delicious even after traveling for a day!

****
Venue: Bamboo in Dedham, MA
Invitations: tinyprints.com
Balloons, hats, blowouts: Iparty
Dol Towers (go-im): DIY
Favors (cookies): DIY
Favor boxes: papermart.com
Banner, Favor tags, birthday hat: 10Candles on etsy.com
Cake and smash cake: Party Favors in Brookline, MA
Rice Cakes (dduk): Gayun in Philadelphia, PA
Raffle: DIY by friend
Kids' Goody Bags: DIY by friend
Fruit Display: DIY by friend
Han Bok (baby's): borrowed from friend
Han Boks (ours): ordered from Korea for our wedding
Photography: Brian Choi

William's 'Under the Sea' Doljanchi :: Korean "Dol" 1st Birthday

:: Words and Photos shared by William's mom Helen ::

We got William’s dol pictures! The photog did a pretty good job of capturing all the details. I’m so happy! I’m normally not good at this detail stuff, so I’m glad with all the thought I put into it, we got to capture some of the things we did during the day.

We had William’s birthday at Shanghai Reds in Marina Del Rey, and with the view of the Marina, I thought I would do a undersea/oceans theme party. I knew I wanted to work with greens, blues, and whites so it fit perfectly!

For centerpieces I thought of doing live fish, but I didn’t want to deal with dead fish at the end or during the party and be stuck with a bunch of fish if no one wanted to take them home. So I tried to find a way to float glass fish in water. I attached fishing line to cork boats to float the fish… And it WORKED!!! I’M A GEEEEENIUS! And humble, but I was so excited. I was happy with the way it turned out!

I halved a cork, stuck a toothpick and pasted triangle sails… voila… floating boats!

that help fish float!

I had fish and octopus balloons made by Balloon World… and they did such an amazing job!

room shot

At each table we had a program for the birthday and an explanation of the significance of dol and doljabis

Chocolate wrapped favors for the bigger kids and adults, and goodie filled baggies for the little kids

Entrance table with doljabi board, wish/blessing tree, and under-the-sea cupcakes

Of course Mocha made an appearance (William’s 1st stuffed doll), and my aunt found these amazing blue flowers that fit perfectly with the underwater theme.

Doljabi voting fishbowls

If you’re considering doing a wish/blessing tree, I have 2 words for you - Do it! Some cute and great messages come out of it for your baby as wonderful keepsakes

William not only got gifts but lots of envelopes, which will go into his 529 college fund. Easier to transport for us parents that drove down to do his dol:)

Here’s the birthday boy who had no idea we were celebrating his birthday! He was actually sick with this bad cold that’s going around, but he did great despite that! Just was a stone face:)

We had a Birthday Quiz for William - and a prize for those that did well. It was fun!

Happy Birthday to yooou~, Happy Birthday to yooou~, Happy Birthday dear Williammmmm~

Doljabi time! What will William choose?

Let me grab the baseball!

Why is everyone yelling and screaming???

Mommy wants to give me a 2nd shot for an alternate path… Law!

They’re screaming again… order! order!

Pic with grandparents behind the dol table. One regret I have is that we didn’t get ANY pictures with our siblings at this party!!!:( Gonna have to make up for it for William’s Sacramento birthday

Dol table shot with the 3 of us (better view of the table)

I bought treasure box looking favor boxes, and we packed dduk as favors for the guests

Us outside the room (loved the view!)

On to Vendor Reviews!

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

1st Birthday Banner - KOKOLiving.com (KOKO Printing Co.) and Dohl Posters & More -

They did an AMAZING job with a quick turnaround. I thought I might have to pay a rush fee, but they arranged it so that I was able to get the poster in time, and advised I was guaranteed to get it before the party without the rush fee. They were right! The artwork done by Heesook at Dohl Posters & More was perfect and what I had envisioned, and Kathy at KOKOLiving.com / (KOKO Printing Co.) was super easy to work with and was the one that helped me figure out the shipping and printing of the poster. I would HIGHLY recommend working with them. They also do doljabi posters, for future kids, I’ll be going to them for both needs based on my experience.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Balloon World - They were prompt and did an amazing job with the balloons. My cousin recommended them, so that’s why I hired them out of 3 other potential vendors that did balloons. I had so many compliments and they were easy to work with. I would definitely use them again and highly recommend them.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Flowers and fruit - My aunt did them. Just giving credit. Love her!

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Photography - Pai Photography. They did a great job of capturing the details and they were super economical! We were already spending quite a bit on this dol and didn’t have a whole lot of budget left. They did a great job, and were also prompt. They took all the photos above. I did some photoshopping to them (just processed a little), but I needed nice pictures to work with, and they did that for us!

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Fondant cake, dol goim, wish tree - Rented it all from Twinkle Events. They also do event planning, but I had pretty much everything planned by the time I went to them, so just needed the rentals. I rented everything for a week, and it worked out well.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

William’s hanbok - I bought it somewhere in ktown… if you need vendor info on that, let me know and I’ll try to dig up.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Caricature Artist - I actually hired a caricature artist for the day, and she didn’t show up! OK, honestly when the time came, we probably didn’t really need her, and didn’t have much space. But, I was annoyed she didn’t call me. I was going to blast her on this blog, but she wrote me saying it was a misunderstanding and she saw a “cancel” email and thought it was me. Not sure if she’s making it up, but she’s going to give us a free caricature of our family as an apology. So, I’ll holdback her name assuming it really was a misunderstanding:)

 

OK, this post is getting long so I’m just going to end with. Thanks for all our family that made it down from Sacramento to help with the party (especially Greg’s mom who did the chocolate bars, programs, games) and also celebrate with us, and thanks to my 1st aunt for all the flowers and fruit, and thanks to my parents for helping me figure out details in LA while I was up here in Sac, and thanks for hubby for helping me tie all the fishies to the cork, make invitations, and lots of miscellaneous details… I still felt overwhelmed with all that help. Without their help though, this party wouldn’t have been possible. I’m actually glad it was fun and great, and that it’s over. hehe! No more planning! Yayyy!

Nathan's Doljanchi :: Korean First Birthday "Dol" Party

Korean American Mommy Grace has shared her first son Nathan's birthday celebration with us. She has tons of great ideas that made his First Birthday "Doljanchi" very special. There's Nathan on his Dol Sang (Birthday table) in his traditional Korean Hanbok. What a cutie!

Also, take a close look at the decorative towers. One is made of cereal and maybe you can guess the others. I personally like how the Dduk (rice cakes) are individually wrapped to keep them moist and yummy. Its a favorite after party snack for sure!  Below, is a table for the doljabi game has been prepared by Grace with a fabulous twig tree holding photo ornaments of Nathan's photo shoot.

Party favors are a great keepsake and decoration for a Doljanchi (Korean First Birthday). Here Grace used small hand towels to look like ice cream in a paper cone. Anything wrapped in cellophane, especially holding yummy cookies are another fabulous flare for the party!

The party banner was all mommy Grace's idea (colors, cow image and ice cream cones). Heesook of Dohl Posters & More gave it a final designers touch and the banner was printed with KOKO Printing Co. adding the perfect final touch to the whole celebration.

Thank you Grace and Nathan for sharing your special First Birthday with us!

Words by: Kathy Choi-Lee

Lila's Dol by Angie Bae

It’s a colorful “Dol” (traditional Korean first birthday celebration) that Angie Bae {from Meli & Angie Cookies} created for her adorable daughter Lila.

There are so many meaningful & handcrafted details in this party… from the creative cookie invitations and fabulous paper globe centerpieces (representative of family members) to handmade candy pillars (see below), a shimmery cake inspired by Lila’s hanbok, and more!

Read on for lots more images and all the party details, as told by Angela…

*****

“For Lila’s dol/Korean first birthday party, the inspiration came easily when I first saw her hanbok (traditional Korean dress.) I loved the combination of pinks, white and lime green. They reminded me of Lila’s bubbly and happy personality, so we incorporated them into all the party details.

Invitations/Cookies
Along with invitations from Tiny Prints, we included a set of “button” sugar cookies in pink and green from Meli & Angi. Guests either received a set that read lila/1 or chook/dol (1st birthday) in Korean characters.

Cookies were placed in a plastic case and filled with white tissue shred for cushioning.

Elevator Photo Greeting
Since the party was on the 4th floor, we printed out photos of Lila and taped them in the elevators to greet guests. It reads “Oh! You made it. I’m on the 4th floor!” I love Lila’s “oooh!” expression in this photo:

Photo Wall
When you enter the space, there is a blank wall so we filled it with large sized photos of Lila. They were from different months in her first year, and displayed like a gallery setting. We used 3M temporary hooks so we wouldn’t damage the walls/paint.

What Will Lila Pick? Board
The “doljabee” is a traditional element of the Dol. Items are laid out in front of the baby for her to choose from. The item that she picks will foretell her path in life. Money = wealth. Pencil = scholar. Thread = long life. Rice = never go hungry. We also added in a Mic = musical and an Abacus = intelligence.

Guests wrote their names on ballots and put them in the pocket they thought Lila would choose. From the selected item, we randomly chose guests to win prizes. Lila picked the abacus first, followed by the rice.

Centerpieces & Banner
These paper globes were made by following Heather Bailey’s template. Each centerpiece includes globes of varying height to represent our family of 3.

The “planter” is a white bakery box with green scrapbooking paper and pink ribbon arranged to look like 3 stripes of varying widths. The “stems” were trimmed down wooden dowels (purchased at Home Depot) and bbq skewers wrapped in green tissue paper. We stood them in floral foam and topped each planter with green crinkle cut paper shred (from Michaels).

The globes themselves were made from various scrapbooking papers found on Amazon. For Lila’s birthday banner, we used the same scrapbooking paper to have consistent colors.

Birthday Cake
Lila’s “hanbok” cake was made by Ruth Shin of Brooklyn Cake. It was strawberry shortcake with buttercream filling, and so delicious! We love that she was able to translate Lila’s hanbok into a cake… especially the ribbon detail.

Go-Ims
The birthday table traditionally has go ims (pillars) on display. To personalize them, I used red beans and Korean rice puffs to make: 1) a mouse because Lila was born in the year of the mouse, 2) “Sora”, her Korean name and 3) “chook dol” in Korean characters.

I also made 2 more using white, green and pink Mentos in stripes and flower designs.

In front, we have plates of fruit and dduk (Korean rice cakes) which later get packaged for guests to take home.

Dduk To Go
To package the dduk for guests, we used plain white take out boxes and printed out thank you labels with pink stripes from Avery.

Lollipop Garden
Guests were also welcome to take lollipops from this “garden“. All the materials used to make it were found at Michaels – a wooden CD crate, floral foam, green crinkle cut paper shred, individual letters that spell out her first and middle/Korean name, paint and craft glue.

We are so glad that Mary Jane Photography and some of our very talented friends (Albert, Sandy, Susan and Sam) were able to help us remember Lila’s dol through photos. I still can’t believe Lila’s 1st year has come and gone. It really did fly by, but I remember every moment like it just happened.

I love you Lila!”

*****

Originally posted on Hostessblog.com

Mom's Balloon - baby's 1st Dol

    < Baby SW's 1st birthday - Fleming's, Edgewater, NJ>

In the past two years, I've set up more Dol parties than I would have ever imagined in my entire life.  And every time I get approached by a mom facing 1st Dol of their little precious, it is my duty to guide them in staying within the budget, setting up a nice decor, and most of all, making sure that the birthday child and the family become the main star of the day.  

1st birthday is an occasion to show off how well you have taken care of your child through the very 1st year of their life and how healthy & well they have grown.  It definitely is an occasion when all moms deserve to be recognized for their efforts.

 
   < Small silver stand with crystals>

These days, it seems to be a trend to add much of traditional elements to the Dol table setting.  But, dilemma with this is that most of the modern table is not suitable for traditional set up and may or may not be perfect match with the intended look.    For moms seeking to incorporate traditional elements into general Dol setting, I recommend that there be a simple traditional set up for photo taking & Dol jabi purpose.

 <On the side... A Simple Traditional 'Low-Rise' Setting>

You can easily set up the 'low-rise traditional table' by displaying any item you'd like.  This table can be displayed by putting baby's "go moo shin"  which is worn with Han-bok, Bok ju mu nee, or even a traditional fan...  decorate it to your taste. 

  

<Simple & low key guest centerpiece>

Depending on where the Dol party is held, guest centerpiece should be set up accordingly.   Another factor which determines the type of guest centerpiece to set up may be the hour of day.  

<Dol Jabi Event Set Up & flower decor>

If you use fresh flowers on the Dol table, it's always a great idea to 'share some' for either the photo table or dol jabi table.   Even if it just a small amount, this becomes the finishing touch for the Dol set up

For inquiries on Balloon or Dol package, e-mail : [email protected]

Dol Birthday Balloons & Decorations

Wouldn't it be nice to have some customized items for your little Korean baby's 1st Dol or Baek-il (100th Day) party? The package starts from $20 and includes ceiling balloons and a customized banner with your baby's name or even with his/her photo. If you wish, you may add on more printed balloons with Korean wordings like "Happy 1st Dol".  

BUY NOW | TheKoreanBaby.com | $20