We start with perhaps the strangest, the case of the Crazed Canadian Janitor. According to court records, during a Montreal family's bar mitzvah party, the custodian at the venue stole the party ice, locked it in a freezer, then tried to blackmail the family into paying him for its return! Meanwhile, the man remained AWOL as guests got stuck in the elevators and the pianist had a heart attack. He reappeared, only to try unplugging the band's equipment four hours before the contractually agreed end time, then threatened to lock out all 350 guests a full two hours before the party was supposed to end.
Thankfully, bar mitzvahs from hell are rare. More likely are tales like the trio that follow: "Two days before the bar mitzvah, my sister called to tell me her father-in-law had had a heart attack while driving and had crashed the car. He was in surgery and all eight of them wouldn't be coming to [our daughter's] Bat Mitzvah."
"On the Wednesday before the bar mitzvah, I found out the hotel where all my out-of-town guests were supposed to stay, and where the reception was being held, had somehow cancelled all the reservations and filled the hotel with other people."
"We found out about three months before the bar mitzvah that the rabbi had mistakenly given our son the wrong Torah portion to learn. Everything was booked and arranged for one date but he'd learned the whole portion for the following weekend."
Whew. Can anyone recover from disasters like these? Yes, yes and yes.
As in life, there's no way to guarantee bad luck or tsuris won't join your guest list. But there are several things you can do to try to avoid disasters. And great ways to make sure you don't let them knock you off balance. We've checked in with seasoned pros, like moms who've hosted more than one B Mitzvah, invitation manufacturers, florists, DJs and party planners, who of course, do this for a living, day in, day out. Their bread and butter is making sure your bread and butter (and dozens of other party ingredients, from the dijon to the DJ) are perfect.
While it's tempting to be the first to use a brand-new event space, do so with great caution as unforseen problems can arise that may make you wish you'd booked elsewhere. For instance, one New York party planner anticipates logistical and legal nightmares with a yet-to-open event loft located atop a residential building. The space is signing contracts but no one has figured out how party guests and party suppliers, who require intensive equipment load-in periods, will share the building's two small elevators with its A-list residents. Automotive experts suggest waiting a year or two before buying brand-new car models; the same probably holds about party venues.
Build in plenty of time to proof your invitations and always order a printer's proof! A representative of an invitation manufacturer described the near miss one of their clients encountered when she ordered Hebrew lettering for her invitations. She spelled out her son's name and Torah portion in Hebrew -- but from left to right, as if they were English words. (Hebrew, of course, is spelled from right to left.) Had she not ordered a printer's proof then carefully proofread, she might have mailed out invites with several words spelled backwards!
Build into your caterer's contract a clause about what happens should the business be sold or go out of business before your event. One family learned the new owner of the caterer they'd signed with was refusing to honor a key part of the contract. Just days before the B Mitzvah, the family had to rush around trying to rent their own ice cream freezer, which the new owner did not have!
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