For my Sweet 16 we wanted to do something big and special. Well my party cost up to $6,500. We started planning this party about 6 months before the day of the party. First my mother and I went around to look at catering halls and their prices. We found a good one and we booked 100 people. The prices ended up being about $4,000. After that, I went to a stationary store and bought beautiful paper, which I typed and printed out my invitations. I mailed all my invitations and it cost me only about $40 with the envelopes and the paper. After that my mom bought me 3 rolls of film and within the next 2 months i took pictures of me and my friends (in school, when we went out to clubs, at other sweet 16 parties, at sleep overs and all the fun times). With those pictures along with pictures of my childhood, i cut them up into different shapes and made a beautiful collage with wrapping paper, glitter and confetti on 2 large oaktage boards (perferably the ones used for science projects). One board was all about my child hood, since the day i was born until now.. 3 days before, my mom made me put my dress on and took a picture of me in my back yard dressed in my sweet 16 dress and we put that picture in the middle of the collage, along with my 14th and 15th birthday pictures of me on the sides. The other collage had all my friends. Back to 4 months before, my mom and I went to a gift store and orderd beautiful red and white frames (or watever color ur scheme for ur party is) and we used those as our favors. The frames cost about $9 each.. we also bought a porceline doll with a red dress that had blonde short hair with blue eyes, which looked like me ($100) and it ended up being $1,000. So now we spent about $5,040. Our DJ was $650, which together was $5,690. We bought 17 table candles all together for about $10. ($5,700). My dress was $400. ($6,100). Then for our centerpeices we bought little baskets (10 of them because there was 10 tables, for $5 each-- $50). We spraypainter them and stuck news paper inside, which we bought silk flowers and stuck them in the news paper making a large bouquet of flowers. We bought balloons and decorations. On each table, we hired a lollypop specialist who made me chocolate lollypops. They were large red hearts with a white outline, and they said "Athena's Sweet 16" in the middle. They were about $2 each ($6,350). We also bought 100 little pins that had acriclic flowers and ribon saying "athena's sweet 16" ($1 each --$6,450). Last but not least we bought mini-glow sticks and put one on each plate (50cents each). The party came out to about $6,500 and it was the best night of my life. It might have been a little expensive, but i made $6,000 from all the gifts everyone gave me!