February 3rd, 2010
When your child is on the Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah circuit, you and they, feel like you’ve seen it all!
When the time comes to plan your own child’s celebration, you find yourself on the hunt for something really unique and clever.
Introducing a NEW “extra” for Bar and Bat Mitzvahs from JBK Novelties in Marlboro, New Jersey.
THE PHONE ZONE
Custom Printing on Phone Grips, Phone Cases, and Phone Card Sleeves. Guests can then choose to further customize their item with gems, stickers, and more. You can also decide to pre-print and give these out as a Mitzvah Favor.
Phone Grips make it easier to hold your phone and can also act as a stand when expanded
Add your logo or other pictures or designs to a Phone Grip for a fun different activity at your event
Phone sleeves in a variety of colors can include your Bar or Bat Mitzvah logo
Upgrade and guests can receive a custom phone case
To learn more contact JBK Novelties at 732-414-2865 or info@thephonezones.com.
February 3rd, 2010
EK Productions LTD. is a professional group of entertainers founded in 1986. Their company has grown from a successful D.J. operation to a full scale event planning unit, specializing in videos, dancers, automated lighting and special effects, games, percussionists, M.C.’s, wearable favors, lounge furniture and other exciting entertainment for your affair.
LIDS STATION- Design Your Custom Snap Back
Kids are loving this new LIDS Station where they can pick their patch and color for a custom snap back!
The LID Station can light up
LID Station
Examples of LIDS with custom patches
LID with Patch on the side
Your guests will have many patches to choose from
To learn more, visit the EK Productions extended profile page in our Vendor Directory.
February 1st, 2010
Hi All,
The Tacher family from Syosset, N.Y. set out to have a fun, kid friendly celebration in honor of their daughter Mackenzie’s Bat Mitzvah. Their Havdalah service was at Temple Or Elohim in Jericho, N.Y. and continued with a party at Temple Chaverim in Plainview, N.Y.
Their theme was color, specifically purple and turquoise and was carried out beginning with the invitations and all the way down to the Bat Mitzvah girl’s dress!
Keep reading to learn more about this Mitzvah Family Spotlight. We would like to thank the Tacher’s for sharing their creative ideas with Mitzvah Market! All Vendor information is at the bottom.
Pictured left to right: Ryan, Amy, Bat Mitzvah girl Mackenzie, Steve and Jenna Tacher. All party photography was done by Photography by Neal.
The entire Tacher family looked great. Mom and older sister Jenna bought their dresses at Filly’s (where Mom Amy works!) and Bat Mitzvah girl Mackenzie and her younger sister Ryan got theirs at It’s Simply For You, formerly known as Teen Pix. Dad Steve looked great too!
Bat Mitzvah girl Mackenzie arriving at Temple Chaverim for her celebration!
Creative Concepts transformed the room at Temple Chaverim into a sea of purple and turquoise. They used pictures of Mackenzie taken from a special photo shoot by Hi-Tech to create blow-ups, pillows and other room decor.
Mackenzie waiting to greet her guests
Lighting sets the mood
Each centerpiece was unique!
LOVE centerpieces were used for the kids area on left and Mackenzie stands next to a huge blow-up poster of herself.
These photo pillows were used in the kids lounge area and are now part of Mackenzie’s bedroom decor!
Her invitations were created by Proper Notice and were done in the signature colors and featured a peace sign.
The Tacher’s entertainment was provided by Starlight Express with Kayo at the MC. They really got the crowd going with great dancing music during the entire celebration.
Here Mackenzie “makes her entrance” into the ballroom
Mackenzie’s friends are happy to celebrate with her!
These purple sweatshirt favors were designed for the young guests by And That.
The young guests received sweatshirt favors that were given out in the bags Mackenzie is holding on the left. On the right, the Tacher girls and Mom model the finished product!
Hasson Catering with Temple Chaverim created some unusual foods for the Tacher’s celebration.
Everything tastes better dipped in chocolate!
Delicious sherbets!
The beautiful matching cake was created by Hasson Caterers with Temple Chaverim.
Bat Mitzvah girl Mackenzie with her two sisters during the candlelighting ceremony
Mackenzie’s home and sleepaway camp friends made her a presentation of hand-made special gifts to celebrate her Bat Mitzvah.
Special picture collages..
And posters…
The Tacher’s had a many special touches for their daughter’s Bat Mitzvah. Here are a few they shared with Mitzvah Market:
Mitzvah Mom Amy used Photofetti to create confetti with Mackenzie’s picture that was sprinkled around the room
Mackenzie’s friends used these cubbies above to hold their shoes and party favors
Guests enjoyed Famous Ralph’s Ices!
This was Mitzvah Mom Amy’s second daughter’s Bat Mitzvah. She has this advice, “Make sure you have a list of kids who are getting favors so that the caterer can make sure they are all out and in alphabetical order. It will make the distribution go much faster and smoother!” Thanks Amy! That’s a great tip.
Here is a list of Vendors who made Mackenzie’s Bat Mitzvah special. If you give any of them a call, be sure to tell them you read about their product or service on MitzvahMarket.com. Thanks!
Venue: Temple Chaverim
DJ/MC (Video): Starlight Express
Favors: And That 516-364-9222
Invitation: Proper Notice
Cake: Temple Chaverim
Decor/Florist/Sign-in board: Creative Concepts 516-942-7768
Mom/sister dresses: Filly’s 516-739-9090
Ryan/Bat Mitzvah girl dresses: It’s Simply For You
Hair/Make-up: Entourage 516-496-1700
Photography: Photography by Neal
Photography for decor: Hi-Tech
Special Touch: Photofetti
Special Touch: Ralph’s Ices 516-364-9511
January 29th, 2010
By Andrea Blau, Rewind Pictures
Creating a photo montage or tribute film for your child’s Bar/Bat Mitzvah is very much a collaborative process between you and the production company. You guard the gold treasure: your child’s photos and home video!
In order for any production company to make a personal, creative and unique photo montage, they rely on you to provide your best of the best materials, those that exemplify your child’s personality, memories and adventures along their journey to their Bar/Bat Mitzvah day.
Here are my 10 tips for creating a creative, personal and unique photo/home video montage:
1. Submit 100-150 photos to your producer for a 5-8 minute montage. Choose a handful of photos from each stage of your child’s life: baby, toddler, early childhood, grade school and recent.
2. If you have recorded your child on home video throughout the years, this is a great opportunity to use some of it! Chances are the format in which you recorded (VHS, DV) is difficult to watch at home. Your production company can transfer your old home video to DVD for easy screening and can use portions of it in your montage. There is nothing like home video to spice up a montage! One of the best parts of using home video is one you have it all organized by chapters on DVD, it is preserved forever and easy to watch at any time.
3. Make sure to choose photos that express your child’s personality. For example, if he/she likes to ride horses make sure to include photos on a horse or if he/she likes to laugh a lot, choose photos that seem to represent this personality trait.
4. Of course, your child is the central focus, but it is also nice to include photos of your child with the special people in his/her life. This is a great way to pay tribute to those that have impacted your child on their journey to Bar/Bat Mitzvah day.
5. If you are pulling photos from a family album, make sure to mark the place where you took the photo out. It will make it much easier when you need to return the photos to their original places!
6. On the back of each photo, write a brief description of the photo and an approximate date the photo was taken.
7. Once you have gathered all of the photos you would like to use, sort them chronologically or according to theme. Possible themes could include sports, family life, the “jokester,” or the “Broadway star.”
8. You can choose to scan your photo selections yourself or hand them over to the professionals to digitally archive them for you. Either way, the photos need to be a high resolution (above 1MB) and touched up for visible scratches, red eye, etc. At the end of the process, you will have a beautiful archive on DVD of your son/daughter’s photos throughout the years digitally archived and safe for years to come in addition to your montage or tribute film.
9. Although the photos of your child in the bathtub nude is cute to you, your son/daughter might not appreciate these types of photos in a montage or film premiering at an event in front of everyone they know! Please use caution and consider your child when choosing the photos.
10. Make this a fun activity! Involve your child and the whole family in choosing the materials for your montage or film. The process of digitizing these materials will not only serve in creating a beautiful film or montage, but also provide you with a digital archive for years to come. Consider it a 2 in 1 deal!
Rewind Pictures produces high quality films, tailor made to your own unique style and story that can be shared at special events and kept as modern day heirlooms.
Click here to see samples of their work.
January 29th, 2010
By Leslie Alder, www.thevuvclub.com
A Bar/Bat Mitzvah is a rite of passage. The event is spiritual and wonderful and the party or celebration is absolutely a choice…so I have no sympathy for the anxiety anyone suffers when planning or paying for a big elaborate bash and I expect you to have none for me. That being said…..
I decided to pull out the “folder” I used to hold all the information and bills from my first child, Max’s Bar Mitzvah as “foreplay” to my beginning to dig in to the details of Sydney’s Bat Mitzvah….and then I allowed myself to do the math…and then I proceeded to have a full out, heart palpitating, anxiety attack.
I come by this type of anxiety honestly. My dad said, when making my wedding, that it was “like buying a Jaguar and driving it for four hours then pushing it off a cliff.” And though I don’t really believe this, though Max’s Bar Mitzvah was one of the best nights of my life, I am haunted by the technicality that this statement is somewhat true and these are the sensibilities I was raised with.
And just when I thought I had calmed down, I asked a dear friend who just made sweatshirts for her daughter last month to confirm I can do this for the same budget I did 3 years ago….she tells me she spent two and a half times as much….cha ching!
Then I went to my venue with a party planning/decorations type person I want to work with and she shared some brilliant ideas with me…and some numbers as in what these brilliant things cost……cha ching! And the palpitations returned. Is that a trial or a tribulation?
I don’t know. I just tell myself, “deep breaths ….you never really liked the way a Jaguar looked anyway.”
About Leslie Adler
Leslie Adler is a mother, lawyer and creator of www.thevuvclub.com and shares her witty thoughts on the many roles women play in their everyday lives. Leslie also combines her legal skills and friendship experience as presiding judge of Momlogic’s “The Friendship Court.”
We hope you will follow along as this Mitzvah Mom updates us on all the highs and lows leading up to her daughter’s May 2010 Bat Mitzvah. Everything from conflicts with other children’s dates to the dress, catering and other Vendor drama. Leslie will bring humor to this exciting yet stressful time for many families.
Read Part 1 here.
Read Part 2 here.
January 27th, 2010
Create-An-Image specializes in embroidery and custom imprinted party favors for Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, Sweet 16’s, school giveaways, promotional items, custom team uniforms, printed T-shirts, sweatshirts and apparel, and other unique imprinted gifts for your special event.
Both Randy Stander and Bruce Pollack have been the co-owners for the past 25 years and are members of the Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI) since 1985 and can offer their customers the most competitive prices in the industry.
Leslie Pollack (Director of Sales) and her sales team will give you the most personalized customer service, free information, samples and price quotes.
A T-shirt and fitted white sweatshirt for a tropical surf themed Mitzvah celebration
Contact: Leslie Pollack (c) 516-680-2277 or (o) 516-937-1809 or email at LKpollack@aol.com.
Create-An-Image has great ideas, but for the best guidance, contact Leslie directly.
January 22nd, 2010
By Leslie Adler, www.thevuvclub.com
So, you’ve got a date….now what?
My daughter wanted a party.
There was no wavering, no doubts, no thoughts of a trip instead….Sydney definitely wanted a Saturday night bash with dancing and debauchery. Well, she wanted dancing….Eric (the husband) and I wanted debauchery.
Our next step then, was to select a venue.
I think selecting a venue is like dating…you should look “within your league.” In other words, what is the point of going to a place and falling in love with it if you know it is outside of your price range?
That being said, it was helpful for me to have a budget in mind. To do that I needed a rough idea of our head count, children and adults. Another economic tip my accountant buddy gave me was to realize the quoted numbers are sans tax and gratuity, meaning, for the non-math people like myself, $100 per head is more like $125 per head. “I’m just sayin’…this was helpful to me.”
The budget was also relevant for me, because even more than not wanting to set myself up for disappointment, I did not want to take Sydney to places that would excite her but would not be places I would ultimately feel comfortable making a party. No matter what your budget, everyone has limits…for example: don’t tease your kid and say Rihanna will perform at your party if that is not within the realm of reality….get my drift?
More on why I think selecting a venue is like dating….
I found during my first planning experience that it is very important to like the “caterer” or whatever the place you like calls the “dude(s)” in charge. Every place I investigated, I asked my gut if this person was someone I could work with. (I walked out on a florist who kept me waiting for one hour for a scheduled appointment. I did not think she thought me or my event important enough….so I found another fish in that sea). I learned you need to put a lot of faith and trust in this person in order for your experience to be pleasurable, so I had this in mind this time around as well.
The East Meadow Jewish Center was the location of Leslie’s first planning experience. Check out The Adler Mitzvah Family Spotlight
Another tip I followed: Read your contract! You don’t need a lawyer to review it just don’t ignore it. Are you guaranteeing a minimum? What is the required deposit? (It is reasonable to ask for some money to hold the date…but not too much) When is payment due? Does it include valet? Security? If your kosher, do you realize you need to pay the guy who needs to sit in the kitchen and make sure they slaughter your chickens correctly? Translation: know the deal. Again, I learned the first time around, there’ll be enough surprises along the way….
As for my family…we loved our first experience, which was at a Temple with a great caterer. We would have done our second party there as well, except the Temple was Orthodox and the sun’s bedtime in May precluded us from being able to make a Saturday night party there (couldn’t start till 8:45 PM).
This caterer was embarking on a new venture that would have had him at another Temple as well, but he had not signed on the dotted line yet. Once I knew working with him would not work this time, I looked at only 4 other locations and brought Eric and Sydney back to the one I liked the best.
A sigh of relief….now that my daughter’s venue was booked (a Country Club) we could take some time off before the next decision and until we entered the Bar/Bat Mitzvah Year…our very own Jewish version of the twilight zone.
Till next time….
About Leslie Adler
Leslie Adler is a mother, lawyer and creator of www.thevuvclub.com and shares her witty thoughts on the many roles women play in their everyday lives. Leslie also combines her legal skills and friendship experience as presiding judge of Momlogic’s “The Friendship Court.”
We hope you will follow along as this Mitzvah Mom updates us on all the highs and lows leading up to her daughter’s May 2010 Bat Mitzvah. Everything from conflicts with other children’s dates to the dress, catering and other Vendor drama. Leslie will bring humor to this exciting yet stressful time for many families.
Read part 1 here.
January 20th, 2010
As you know, the premise for Mitzvah Market is Mom-to-Mom advice. We love it when a Mitzvah Mom feels so strongly about a product or service she used for her child’s Bar or Bat Mitzvah and writes in to let us share the information with our readers.
We heard from Alyssa Blicht about a professional poem writer:
“Planning a Bar/Bat Mitzvah certainly takes a lot of time and effort. After planning my daughter Nicole’s Bat Mitzvah this past September, I came in contact with Carolyn Schwartz and hired her to write the poems for our candle lighting ceremony.
Carolyn met with us to get our input on each person that was included in the ceremony and then wrote the most creative poems. She is so professional and very easy to work with. As an added touch, she had each poem laminated on special stationary to give to each person who was called up to light a candle. I highly recommend her services.”
Carolyn can be reached at 516 -312-0727 and you can check out her Website.
If you have some Mom-to-Mom advice about one of your Mitzvah Vendors, let us know at info@MitzvahMarket.com.
January 20th, 2010
Hundreds of kids across the country age 11-15 entered Areyvut’s annual Mitzvah Project Video Essay Contest. The contest was open to students who had a Bar/Bat Mitzvah and wanted to share their experiences with others by making a video on their Mitzvah project.
The video needed to capture why and how they incorporated the values of chesed (kindness), tzedakah (charity) and tikkun olam (social justice) into their Mitzvah celebration.
Congratulations to all the winners! First place winner Mitchell Abrams is from New City, NY, second place winner is Marcus Apter from West Hartford, CT and third place went to Alex Harelick from White Plains, NY.
Winning the contest also helped raise the profile of their project, the organizations that benefited and to get others involved in their work. Click here to see the winning videos and learn more about the 2010 contest.
January 16th, 2010
Planner Positive
By Terry Vogel, Event Kings
In this Google age, it is easy to search for a DJ, décor, entertainment and everything in between for your next event. Comparison shopping for a party has never been easier, and in our economic climate, deals are up for the making. So why choose an event planner for your Bar/Bat Mitzvah when it seems so easy to take it all upon yourself? Here are four top reasons to go with one person that will guide you through this journey.
1. A more balanced event.
If you use an event planner that can offer music, entertainment and décor, your budget will be more evenly spread out to get a holistic event. A florist will try to sell you the largest centerpiece they can, a DJ will insist you have an MC, 4 dancers and a crazy light show. An entertainment company will sell you a Britney Spears impersonator along with your photo-station. But a planner has the entire event in mind and will distribute your budget in places that are most important to you without making the party seem unbalanced.
2. Keep your budget in check.
Sometimes that bottom line number can be scary, but having everything on one contract will help you manage your costs. When you book a DJ “here” and get balloons “there” and then buy little additions along the way, it all adds up, and few people do the math. Or, few people do the math accurately, not realizing what all the costs may be. A planner will control the budget you set, so when you say I want my total to be under $10,000 she won’t sell you $300 centerpieces.
3. She does this for a living.
Your planner has most likely done this a hundred times or more. She’s seen what can go wrong and can offer advice on how to prevent that ahead of time. As a planner, she knows which trendy games work best to get the kids excited or how to pick the best candle lighting songs. A seasoned event professional has also worked with the best outside vendors.
4. Peace of mind.
Lets face it, on the day of your event the last thing you want to worry about is that everything is coming together as you planned. You should be focusing on this momentous occasion for you and your family NOT if the centerpieces have arrived. Let your planner take care of all of those details and more. She will remind you that the speeches are coming up so you’re not in the restroom when the DJ announces you; she will get the maitre’d if the plates run out on the buffet line; and she will make sure that your family gets together for that once-in-a-lifetime group picture. All you will have to do is enjoy the event and have fun!
For more information on Event Kings, please visit their extended Vendor Directory profile page.
