The brief
A villa in Canggu, late afternoon, family and friends — and a request we get constantly from parents who have already done the decor-and-cake version twice: something the children will remember physically. Foam is the cheapest way to buy that, and the most reliable.
What we built
The set stayed deliberately soft so the foam would read against it: a balloon installation in peach, nude, stone and cream with dried palm fans built through it, and a bear standing at one end. All of it in the villa’s own colours, so that when the foam came the photographs went white and gold rather than plastic and bright.
How the day went
The cannon went on and the children were in it before it had properly landed — running the terrace, sliding, going under and coming up with a wig of foam on their heads. Then, as it always goes, the adults stopped filming. The family had come in matching printed T-shirts and by the end every one of them was soaked through, hair flat, laughing. Golden hour did the rest.
What the parents got
Twenty minutes that the children will describe for a year, and — because they got in — photographs of themselves at their own party instead of behind a phone.
