Asking neighbors to turn down noise

You were chill, they were chill, this is an exception, not repeated behavior. You're fine! Wish them a happy birthday when you see them.

My wife and I lived in apartments for about 8 years, until we moved into our home. Our policy was basically

1st time: Do and say nothing, sometimes people's lives are loud and our need for grouped housing just makes that hard. If your apartment complex is typically quiet, you can infer that everyone is working their best to be quiet, that makes this anomaly perfectly tolerable.

2nd time (Within 30 days): Follow up the following day and ask them to let us know if they're going to have people over late and things might get loud. It helps us coordinate and it gives us a baseline of how easy it is to talk to this person, because we're not asking for them to change their behavior yet, just to be courteous.

If they give us notice and it's not happening really often, we're happy with that. Again, it's hard living around people and as long as it's not happening all the time, we can make space for that and plan to wear earplugs or use white noise.

3rd time: Typically this is a person who's started being loud right after moving in, will not honor our request for notice, and escalates when we try to talk to them. Management, immediately. I don't interface with them at all, I go to management every single time and I document everything. We had one really bad experience with a neighbor and we realized it's easy to spot the difference between someone who is the main character and those who understand they are living in a community and that means compromise.

I don’t think you did anything wrong. Regardless of whatever justification you might or might not have, you have a right to quiet during quiet hours.

Literally just had a similar thing happen to me. Neighbors started screwing something into the wall we share. There’s laws regarding sound, and it’s way past that. So I waited and, in a pause of their drill, banged my elbow into the wall. They stopped. I probably should have called the doorman, had the doorman call them, blah blah. But it’s late, and I lived too long in NYC. I have zero tolerance for after-hours sound, and I live in an area that does not take sound regulations lightly, so I have no regrets. I imagine their upstairs and downstairs neighbors probably also were in awe at someone drilling a cement wall this late.

We live amongst others. Friction is inevitable. Conflict is inevitable. You’re okay. You have a right to peace.

To be honest, I don't know how you could have possibly handled it more delicately. You weren't being the jerk here, the people having the party were.

I'm still a bit of a drama whore, and one of the things I miss most about reddit is /r/AmITheAsshole. This post would definitely warrant an overwhelming "NTA" (Not The Asshole) response there though, IMO. You were respectful, and have a valid complaint. You did the right thing, approached it the right way, and should have nothing to regret.

p.s. And I say that as someone who has been on the opposite side of this issue too, BTW. Although we have always sent gifts to our neighbors (usually flowers or a bottle of wine) whenever we had a late night party planned, to warn them ahead of time about the noise, and as a mild form of bribery to get them to accept some of the excess noise past the times when noise ordinance laws come into effect. ;)

Your request is fine. Their response was fine. Don't sweat it. For all they knew, you could've had a rough day and needed to be up early the following morning.

But if it were to be used as an excuse, it would have been 100% on them anyway. Birthdays are no excuse to treat the people around you like crap. I've always thought people who use their birthday as an excuse to be inconsiderate assholes to the people around them to be only in fiction stories, when you want it to be blatantly obvious they're the bad guy.

Thinking maybe I should have let it slide regardless of whether it was their birthday or not

I am thinking that you are overthinking it ;) As others said, you handled it absolutely fine and reasonable.

In addition to that, birthday or not after 12 you can expect neighbors to want to sleep. Most municipalities in my country even have specific noise ordinances that dictate until what time you reasonably can still make noise. Needless to say that after midnight is well after the cutoff time most of them use.

You were not in the wrong, at all.

Their freedom to make noise, ends at their walls, floor, and ceiling. The other tenants like yourselves have rights and lives too.

If it becomes a recurring thing find out what apartment they are in, and what the rules of the building are regarding noise.

I've dealt with shit like that before. My sincere hope this was a one off.

I agree with everyone else that it seems like everyone is fine. But wanted to add that it is important to meet your neighbors, as many as possible, especially when you live so close. And meet them earlier rather than later. You don’t have to be best friends, but simply taking a small effort to actually greet them even if it means knocking on doors and just saying “hi, I’m ____ and I live in the area, wanted to say hi”.

Having done that before any issue ever arises makes it much easier to talk when things do come up, because you aren’t starting from zero.

There are many other potential benefits too.

However, the caveat is that I’m a cis white male so likely don’t have to worry about some risks that others might experience in being this forward with strangers. I won’t pretend that everything is honky dory everywhere in the world.

Not anal at all. Some people are just really inconsiderate.. there is sadly very little one can do about noisy neighbours - speaking from experience.