Tangled 18th Birthday Party Ideas

Hopefully, these are helpful as you plan the birthday party for your own young adult. Young adult! I can no longer say, “child.” We have arrived.

Here you will find decorating, food, and activity ideas with a creative Tangled theme. I’m going to walk you through setting it up every step of the way.

Want another fun birthday theme for a teenage daughter? Check out my DIY Pop-Up Picnic party idea.

I’ve hosted so many parties, but I think this one may have been my favorite of all time. Is it because an 18th birthday feels like the biggest milestone so far? Perhaps it is because Tangled is just such a fun theme. Maybe it was the meaningful touches we did in the end. Whatever the reason, I’m so excited to share with you these fun Tangled 18th birthday party ideas.

This post contains Amazon affiliate links. Anything purchased through these links goes to support the free resources I provide here at Meaningful Mama. Thank you for your support.

For this party, I put together an Amazon Storefront for you. This is one go-to place with all the items you would need to purchase to re-create this party. I hope this adds some ease to your party planning.

For me, I was happy to have a number of things on hand. I wash my plastic “disposable” plates so they can be reused. If you host a lot, I have loved having the matching white plastic folding chairs. I had leftover gold silverware from another party. My friend has so many flowers in her yard, so I was able to just steal flowers from her. The ivy was a great weeding project in my own yard. I had to just purchase a few key items to make the party come to life, namely the napkins, purple tulle with fairy lights backdrop, and the lanterns.

Note: I received a free product to share my Canva experience. All opinions are authentically mine.

I use Canva, an amazing online design program, for a myriad of purposes. Every time I entertain, when I blog, when I make reward charts for kids, and my own children use Canva for projects at school. It’s intuitive and has so many templates and images to help create designs.

I recently upgraded from the free to the pro version so that I have access to even more, which is how I used their Tangled-themed template to design my daughter’s birthday invitations. While the design you see here was originally for a poster, I quickly adapted it to become a digital invitation for the party.

If Disney is your thing, Canva has a vareity of templates. These templates are perfect for:

Canva has options for Tangled, The Lion King, Cars, and more, like these classic Disney designs.

Beyond Disney, there are templates for a variety of themes and applications like business cards, invitations, posters, custom designs, social media creations, marketing materials, and cards, just to name a handful.

In terms of food, this was actually one of the easier parties to host. A Costco trip and a trip to Krispy Kreme with very little prep were all that was required.

The main course was croissant sandwiches. I borrowed cast-iron pans from friends to display the components of the meal: meats, cheeses, fruit, veggies, and chips. I also had mayo, mustard, dijon, and a dip made for the vegetables and chips.

The goal was to display the croissants so that they looked like Rapunzel’s braid, with flowers intertwined. I love how it turned out. The meat tray was transformed into an exhibit of flowers. I’ll provide a TikTok video to show you how it’s done. I’d love to have you follow me on TikTok if you aren’t already.

My husband made a donut stand for me. It was essentially a long dowel attached to a wooden base. I happen to have a grass square from my butterfly birthday, which worked great to cover the base. These ivy ones would be adorable too, and they could work as placemats if you wanted to change the design up a bit.

The donuts were then stacked, one on top of the other, on the stand. Warning: The bottom ones do end up squished. They still tasted yummy. I used a free cone template to make the cone top of the Tangled donut tower. I printed the template onto lavender stock paper, cut it out, and taped it together using my new favorite craft supply, glue tape.

In many ways, the food table is a decoration in and of itself. The flowers woven into the braid, displayed in mason jars, and at the base of the donut tower bring nature, color, and beauty into the design, matching the overall feel of the movie Tangled.

I hope you visited my Amazon storefront to find the lavender tulle backdrop with fairy lights.

Another free but effective component of my design was ivy. I had my son pull a bunch for me, which was kind of needed in our yard anyway. Did you know ivy lasts for a long time without water? I’m talking days. This makes it easy to decorate for your party ahead of time. The ivy became the backdrop for my food table.

Ivy was a feature component of my table centerpiece. I just draped it down the center. At the last minute, I stuck some fresh, purple flowers in the ivy.

Also on the table were my DIY Tangled lanterns. I downloaded a free printable from Pixie Dust Dreaming and printed it out on vellum, which can also be found in my Amazon storefront. Using glue tape, I sealed the ends together. Wonderful but fake votive candles flickered in the lanterns.

A gold rimmed plates, gold silverware, and lavender napkins finished off the Tangled table design. Hanging above the table were lavender, purple, and gold Chinese lanterns.

You are never too old for a good old-fashioned piñata, and the Tangled theme provided the perfect concept. I did a DIY piñata using an Amazon box and tissue paper, but if you want an easier solution, you can find plain piñatas on Amazon, also in my storefront.

The free printable of the wanted poster for Flynn Rider can be found here. I had it printed on a poster-sized piece of paper and attached it to my piñata.

While I recognize a bat or a stick is typically used to destroy the piñata, a frying pan is the perfect weapon of choice for a Tangle-themed birthday party with a Flynn rider wanted poster on it.

My favorite component of the party was the lantern ceremony. I purchased both the floating lanterns for the lake and the floating lanterns for the sky on Amazon. Like all other products mentioned, they can be found in my Amazon storefront.

A meaningful component of the celebration involved lanterns that float on the water. We had everyone at our family party write a blessing on the lanterns. Then, we headed out to the dock to read our blessings to the birthday girl and then float the candles onto the lake.

Don’t worry! After the lantern celebration was over, we collected the lanterns even though the package says they are biodegradable. They also had real candles in them, so we didn’t want to catch another dock on fire.

We ended the evening with a magical moment – floating lanterns. I was hesitant to buy these, and I made the purchase last minute, but I’m so glad I purchased them. They were a highlight of the evening and a culmination of my daughter’s childhood season.

I am sure you are wondering about these lanterns. After reading mixed reviews, I wasn’t convinced we would get many working, but that wasn’t our experience. We only lost two, and that was because we didn’t have enough patience to let them fill with hot air as long as we should have, and they drifted gently down into the lake, where the flame was extinguished. We also fished these out of the water.

I want to share with you my tips for Chinese floating lanterns:

I’m thankful these lanterns worked and went off without a hitch because they were super special and definitely on theme.

That concludes childhood. That concludes our Tangled party. End scene.