Parents Abhishek and Aishwarya Bachchan threw a princess theme party to ring in Aaradhya's fifth birthday on Sunday evening while grandpa Amitabh Bachchan gushed about the “most beautiful granddaughter in the whole wide world“ in a blog post on the eve of Baby B's big day. On the evening itself, he was appropriately pink in a Nehru jacket as he stood at the gate of his bungalow Pratiksha welcoming guests from 5pm.

Sonali Bendre was spotted with hubby Goldie Behl and son Ranveer, Kiran Rao came with son Azad and Sanjay Gupta turned up with his daughter, Dalai, whose gift was bigger than her. Sanjay Dutt's twins Shahran and Iqra were accompanied by mamma Manyata and Neelam strolled in with daughter Ahana. Akshay Kumar was busy with the launch of 2.0 but his better half, Twinkle, took their daughter Nitara to the party. Also present were Kunal Kapoor and wife Naina Bachchan.

There were photo-sessions galore on a large white chariot and the buffet was laid outdoors. There were three cakes ­ one with a princess in a silver tiara wearing Aaradhya's face, another pink and blue cake one for the b'day girl and the third a surprise for nana Krishnaraj who had just brought in his own birthday with the words, “Happy Birthday Ajja“ on it.

“The guest list took a week to be finalised after which invites were sent out and return gifts purchased according to the ages of the kids. Aishwarya personally picked out the bean bags and chocolates as return gifts,“ reveals a source.