Hey Sarah,
Don't forget - you had a big Christening for Zander too. So I don't think you are being selfish at all by scaling Zander's party down.
We've had quite a mixture of 1st birthdays with MG. One had just a family and close friends party so they had MG at their place the day before and we had a separate little celebration for her 1st birthday. A couple of us are doing big parties at home. One had her daughter's birthday combined with their wedding and naming day. There's no hard and fast rules so I wouldn't worry about it at all!
One of my other friends had her daughter's 1st birthday in a park. She provided all the food but it was BYO drinks and chairs. She was 7 months pregnant at the time so she wasn't about to have a huge party at her house.

We wrote our list for Gabby's party. We have 81 adults and 38 kids (22 children and 16 babies). It sounds like a lot but we had to do a bit of a cull to get down to that number. I only culled people that we don't see more than a couple of times a year. It was hard because SO many people have sent us cards or bought Gabby presents that I really would have liked to have invited to the party. I even had to cut off some people from my old work because, as much as I would love them there, I really don't have much to do with them anymore.

We are keeping it pretty simple tho. We'll have a naming ceremony for Gab once everyone arrives then a small BBQ with just sausages and hamburgers - nothing fancy. I'll have sausage rolls, party pies and ****tail franks cooking inside during the day too. I'm going to get a few close friends and family to help with salads and nibbles to help me cut costs down. I'm going to attempt to make the cake myself and we are going to state that it's BYO drinks. I'm sure I will be able to borrow some stuff for all the kids to play with to put in the back yard too. We do have a tiny house but we have a huge back yard, car port and garage so I guess we are lucky in that respect.

When all is said and done, I am really throwing the party for us more than for Gabby - even though it's her birthday. We love throwing parties and we haven't really had one since I got pregnant. It's only just now that I feel I could handle having stacks of people over at our house once again. I doubt Gabby will even appreciate all the fuss made over her - she much prefers it when she is home alone with just Mummy and Daddy - that's a big enough party for her, LOL.

We all have our own reasons for celebrating things the way we want to celebrate them. I wouldn't think you were slack at all for keeping things toned down, Sarah. I certainly won't be throwing such a big party every year and the likelyhood of us having the same sized party for the next bubs is pretty remote. You do what you want to do at the time. I'm sure Zander will still have a good day where he'll be thoroughly spoilt and overwhelmed with attention regardless of whether you have 10 or 50 people there.