If the theme wedding is gaining momentum, it has a long way to go before it can compete with today’s bar and bat mitzvah events. In fact, many of the contemporary debates couples have about planning a wedding celebration are in play at these important coming-of-age celebrations too.

How can this event best reflect me and my personality? How can I make sure people remember my event as a great success? How do I balance the religious character of the occasion with the great party everyone’s looking forward to? Another little wrinkle these events share in common is the peer pressure of everyone else’s event: how will mine match up?

While answers to these questions are individual, the trends continue to echo general economic and social trends: extensive personalization and value-oriented big spending.

While these are gala events, the trend continues toward more demands with sharper budgets. “They have been scaled down just a bit,” says Karen Friedman, F&B director at the Ramada Hotel & Conference Center in Amherst, New York.

“I’m seeing more lunches straight from the synagogue instead of dinners. I had two this year that opted for buffets. And people are looking at price more than they used to. I don’t see the $75 to $90 a person that I used to years ago. Now it’s $35–$40. The maximum per head is usually around $50 per person.” So maybe we haven’t managed to reclaim the excess of the ‘80s, but we do want what we want when we want it.

Rabbis continue to speak out against overblown celebration. In the wake of ‘80s excess, a resolution criticized “excesses of wasteful consumption ... glitzy themed events, sophisticated entertainment ... and expensive party favors.” Perhaps the only real change is that these components were once outliers and are now standard. With vendors providing fireworks, indoor pyrotechnics, laser light shows, snow and fog, and mechanical riding bulls to up the stakes even further, themes are a major part of these parties.

“We’ve seen every theme you can imagine,” says Friedman, “particularly with the girls. The boys will have Star Wars or their favorite sport, but mostly they just want the music and the fun.”

Life-size celebrity stand-ups have become common. Anything you can possibly customize to fit a theme peppers the event—t-shirt favors, favorite actors, cut-outs for photo opportunities, the honorees name and face on plates, cups, posters, and custom-designed board games that fill the entire ballroom. Custom inflatables fill the ballroom so kids can literally bounce off the walls.

The piece de resistance is inevitably the table centerpieces, almost always custom designed to showcase the theme.

A Broadway theme featured miniature Broadway stages at each table custom-designed by the bar mitzvah honoree, each with its own different show “on stage” at each table. Says Friedman, “I just booked a luau for a little girl; others have celebrities with life-size posters and tables themed to each of their movies. We just had a “dot” mitzvah, with everything in the room polka-dotted: the walls, the tables, down to the tic tac boxes for place cards.”

Landerhaven party center in Cleveland recently hosted a bat mitvah themed Shelby’s Point of View. The hall was dressed in pink with custom DVDs, dancers, and a rock and roll karaoke recording booth.

Beyond the DJ and band, games are coming onto the scene.An event for twins featured “Twin-opoly” with life-size cutouts of the twins at the entrance to the life-size playing board. One big new game involves races across the ballroom on mini bicycles—those 18-inch tall “gifts for executives.

”Game show and trivia games are also popular. But the DJ continues to be the most important player in the room. Friedman explains, “the boys and girls segregate for awhile—the girls off to one side, the boys huddled on the other side. They count on the DJ to get things going. He brings the hula-hoops out. Sometimes the DJ has dance games. The adults are grateful for a separate lounge to get away from it all. Every one of these events has entertainment, from a boom box to the Boys from Toronto, this crazy duo who come with scantily clad women in sunglasses to get the crowd dancing.”

THE FOOD

“It’s the kids’ night, but I think they get the short end of the stick,” says Friedman. “They typically want fries and hamburgers and pizza. The adults have all the good stuff. They want picky food.” They do have a lot less guilt about dessert though, with buffets of cookies, candies, and every sort of sweet. Dessert stations Willy Wonka would be proud of include chocolate fountains and snow cone stations. “We keep the adult party completely separate from the kids, so kids can never get to the bar. I’ve never seen an attempt at underage drinking at these parties. Kids have food and favors and music— they’re too busy, and they’re happy to be on the A-list that got invited.”

John Paul Boukis is a frequent contributor to HOTEL F&B EXECUTIVE.