Neon to Boho Chic, Stylish Mitzvah Parties are Back on the Calendar

After more than two years of scaled-back festivities due to COVID, bar and bat mitzvah festivities are back, better than ever – and Atlanta families and their guests are ready to party this summer and fall! As events are planned and the fanfare begins, there are distinct trends emerging that will surprise and delight party hosts and their guests.

“Everyone wants to party again,” said Amy Nichols, president of Let’s Celebrate, a popular mitzvah design firm. Many of her clients are asking guests to be tested for COVID 48 hours in advance, but she is not seeing guests wear masks.

Cathy Taylor, president of YES Event Design, echoed Nichols’ sentiments. “People want to celebrate. Attendance at mitzvahs is up, and we’re seeing the size of some of the parties get up to 350 to 400 guests now.”

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Rock and Roll dance floor with a Suspended DJ booth.

Neon, boho chic, gaming and sports-related themes are particularly popular this year and are expected to continue into 2023 for bar and bat mitzvah parties. Green, whether used in neon or as part of another theme, is currently the most popular color of choice, regardless of theme. Interestingly, in late 2021, four major paint companies selected a sophisticated, subtle gray-green shade as their Color of the Year.

Trend predictors find that the popularity of green touches on a common consumer mindset: a desire for peace, tranquility, and connections with nature.

Parties featuring neon often include a focus on the decade of the 1980s. Disco balls are frequently incorporated into the centerpieces, as well as streaming from the ceiling. Bright colors surround guests as they enter the party spaces. Cups with neon lights are featured, and neon cubes with the party logo are incorporated into the centerpieces.

Inspired by Coachella, the glamping motif took center stage at a recent Trendy Fun Party bat mitzvah.

For Monica Salcedo, owner of Trendy Fun Party, the use of black panels with custom-made party logo decals and neon balloons creates an environment that sets the stage for a good time.

“We frequently use neon signs in lights with a customized Mazel Tov or the mitzvah child’s name. Highboy tables are draped in black tablecloths and topped with globes with LED lights that alternate between neon colors. All of these elements help create a successful party and can be used as focal points for photos,” she added.

Many of Let’s Celebrate clients request sports themes.

The Boho trend has taken off for bat mitzvahs, likely as a result of Coachella, a three-day art and music festival held in the Colorado Desert, California. Coachella can be described as a mix of bohemian, rock star and a little Native American. To capture the essence of Coachella, bat mitzvahs feature actual tepees, dream catchers, macramé wall hangings, soft colors, feathers and ribbons.

For Let’s Celebrate, string art, fairy lights, pampas grass and varying sizes of bud vases with a collection of florals and greenery bring this feminine, yet sophisticated theme to life.

Trendy Fun Party utilizes actual tepees with pillows spread throughout the party space as places for conversation, relaxation and potential food stations. Salcedo uses nude balloons, a trendy color for 2022, to complement the other Boho decorations, which include dried flowers, glass lanterns with succulents inside, macramé bases for table centerpieces and pampas grass.

Neon pink and blue illuminate the room for a recent Let’s Celebrate-designed party.

Sports-related and gaming themes continue to be perennial favorites, whether the focus is on a specific team or a group of sports. According to Nichols, the national championship win by the Braves has made the team a popular theme choice for Atlanta bar and bat mitzvahs. The mitzvah child’s name on the team logo scattered throughout the venue sets the stage for bringing the party to life.

“Some of my favorite sports events have been done with girls in mind,” said Nichols. We have spray painted volleyballs pink and created basketballs out of flowers, in fact. The designs are usually more playful for the bat mitzvahs, but can be modern and simplistic as well,” she emphasized.

For Taylor, the mitzvahs she designs are less about a theme and more about what she calls a “vibe.” According to Taylor, “We may be asked to recreate the ambiance of a favorite restaurant or a club in Miami. For a recent mitzvah, we designed an oversized ceiling treatment with 6-foot diameter orbs and light tubes in neon green as the focal point. We have also integrated a DJ booth into our designs, and at a recent event, we even suspended the booth into the air to give guests the feeling of being at a rock concert. We surrounded the booth with lightning bolt chandeliers and silver beads, so people felt they were at a show.”

Tepees are part of the Boho Chic theme at a recent Trendy Fun Party mitzvah event.

Some of the designers also mentioned fathers becoming more involved in the mitzvah planning than in past years. “Before COVID, most of the dads wrote the checks but didn’t get involved in the details. This year, that dynamic changed. Many of the dads work from home now, and I have even worked exclusively with fathers in some cases,” said Taylor.

The cost of hiring a designer varies – anywhere from $2,000 to $40,000, and most designers have a minimum cost. Most of the designers have props, lighting, linens and other elements in inventory for parties, so a fee is simply charged for use. Balloons and flowers are created specifically for each event.

The trend for balloons now is to create garlands of varying sizes and to use new, created colors. Trendy Fun Party places balloons inside balloons, in fact, to create customizable one-of-a-kind colors. Let’s Celebrate integrates a number of flowers in complementary shades for each client’s event. While Trendy Fun Party indicated balloons are used more often as part of their design, Let’s Celebrate sees a movement among their clients toward more flowers, especially for centerpieces.

Whether the mitzvah boy or girl wants a plethora of balloons, extravagant flower centerpieces or a suspended DJ booth, there is a design company to fulfill their every desire.

From assembling an 8’ x 10’ greenery wall to churning out many iterations of the mitzvah logo to be placed at strategic places throughout the event, there is an Atlanta design firm that can turn a family’s mitzvah vision into an event that will be remembered for years to come.