Celebrate Express

- Star Review

Last Updated: 7/1/2009

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Celebrate Express Star Rating

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Conversation around the water cooler in the Star Reviews’ office turned to children's birthday parties a few days ago. One of our team members watched a news story about parents spending thousands of dollars on their little children's birthday parties. We always like a good challenge, so we decided to hunt down the best party planning services on the Net to see if it was possible to cut costs. We landed on Celebrate Express, and loved what we saw initially. See what we ran into below.

What’s New with Celebrate Express Party Planning?

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Exclusives-Find specialized party themes such as ‘Totally Gross’ for your little boy or 'Birthday Princess' for your girl.

Star Reviews Favorite Celebrate Express Feature:

Order Now, Pay Nothing for 3 Months- If you pay for your order with a credit card, you won't have to make a payment for three months. That means you may be able to splurge a little bit more on your child's party or costume. (Some restrictions apply.)

Celebrate Express Features:

Selection of more than 125 party themes, including almost two dozen exclusive themes such as American Idol and Build a Bear Workshop
Personalized party items, including birthday banners
Dozens of party themes available for family get togethers, including Movie Night and Back to School parties.
Invitations, Thank-You Notes, Keepsakes
Costumes available for kids, teenagers, adults, and even pets!

About Celebrate Express:

This party planning service is dedicated to ‘Creating a Lifetime of Memories’ and from their extensive collection of themed parties and favors, we think they’re doing a good job! Celebrate Express's site actually focuses on selling three brands: Birthday Express, 1st Wishes, and Costume Express. However, the company does not simply sell its products online since you can order a catalog and make purchases the old-fashioned way, too.

Navigating & Using Celebrate Express:
When you're trying to plan a party, you definitely want to find what you need and be done so you'll have more time to choose a cake, hire entertainment, etc. With Celebrate Express, you can find everything you need pretty quickly. For example, if you're looking for a theme for your daughter's party, you can narrow your search by gender and again by age (toddler, grade school, middle school, etc.). Not all of the choices are probably appropriate – Elmo and Big Bird are probably not the best choice for a grade schooler's party, for instance – but you can get an idea of what's available.

You can also browse the selection of all the site's themes pretty easily, such as choosing ‘Family Parties’ and narrowing your choices down by category and even pricing. On a theme's page, you can select pre-packaged party supply boxes, order related party favors, and pick up settings for extra guests. The beauty of this website is the fun you have navigating it, as there are plenty of choices!

Celebrate Express Selection:
Celebrate Express easily boasts more than 120 different party themes – many of which you won't find at the competition's sites. Plus, they offer more choices that would appeal to pre-teens, including Pirates of the Caribbean, High School Musical, American Idol, and more. There are also themed parties for the adults, as well, such as golf and grilling or Hawaiian luaus. Besides the themes themselves, you'll also find a large assortment of accessories, including piñatas, party favors, gift boxes, and more.

Pricing & Delivery:
Besides having a great selection, Celebrate Express offers reasonable prices. Below are some examples:

High School Musical Party Box for 8 guests (includes plates, cups, napkins, utensils, balloons, and thank you cards) = $22.99
Happy Feet pinata = $15.99
Baby Einstein Mylar balloon = $2.49

Delivery charges are based on the total amount spent. For UPS Ground, costs start at $5.95.

Customer Support:
Celebrate Express offers customer support via email, live chat, a toll-free phone number, and a FAQs page. The FAQs page included most of the questions customers would have about the site, and these questions are answered in a detailed, easy-to-understand way. Plus, a section just on shipping questions is available.

Our live chat and phone experiences were also positive. In both cases, we had only minimal wait times and were assisted by friendly representatives who effortlessly answered our questions. Unfortunately, our email experience left a little to be desired. While the response we received did answer our question and didn't simply direct us back to the site, it came several days later than promised. An automated response promised a reply within 24 hours. Our answer came more than 72 hours later, which is a tad bit longer than we expected.

Upside:
Amazing selection. Lower prices than competition. Good support by chat and phone.

Downside:
Slow email response.

Summary:
Is Celebrate Express one of the best party planning services on the Internet? The answer is yes. As we were putting together our party planning service reviews, we always look for key elements such as a great selection and affordable prices which would be important to parents. Celebrate Express offers both. The site also provides good customer support, although their email response could have arrived sooner. But, all in all, their huge amount of themed party supplies, costumes and features like the 'Order Now, Pay Nothing for 3 Months' truly impressed us.

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