I recently had the honor of planning a Bar Mitzvah at Verandas. I worked with Max’s parents on creating a flawless event. The weather was beautiful, the food was excellent (as always) and the kids had a great time. I would like to give credit to all of the vendors that made this day unforgetable:
- Photography provided by Kat Monk Studio: (P) 310.379.0715 (email) kat@katmonk.com
- Bar Mitzvah Ceremony Set Up (Bima and Torah) provided by Owen Medly (P) 818.340.4450 (email) jbms@mail.com
- DJ/MC Entertainment by: Percy Brown at Feet First Entertainment (P) 310.641.1844
- Charicacter Artists: Max & Rubens’s California Caricatures (P) 714.992.5210 (email) MaxandRuben@wedrawforyou.com
- Photobooth by: Photobooths for Parties Contact: Jake Dorman (P) 888.301.3434 (email) jake@photoboothsforparties.com
Max’s Bar Mitzvah Ceremony at Verandas
Here is a picture of Max’s Bar Mitzvah ceremony. The Bar Mitzvah, is a Jewish rite of passage at age 13 for a boy. The idea behind the Bar Mitzvah ceremony is that the boy is old enough to follow the commandments as an adult.
Here Max is reading from the Torah. Only Jewish adults may read from the Torah, so this marks his first time doing so as an adult. As part of the ceremony Max also learned some Biblical text and lead some prayers with it.
Bar Mitzvah Blue Specialty Drinks
Directly following the ceremony the guests were invited inside for the cocktail hour. During the cocktail hour Max’s Blue Specialty Drink was tray-passed to his guests. This blue raspberry drink was a huge hit!
Caricature Artists
There were caricature artists drawing the kids – what an awesome party favor for the guests! They did an amazing job. They were great with the guests, and WOW, I’ve never seen someone draw so well so fast – Kudos to Max & Rueben of California Caricatures!
Meal Service
After the Cocktail Hour, the meal service began. As with most of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah’s that I’ve planned, they chose a sit-down meal service for their adult guests and a buffet for the kids. Max got to personally custom create his own buffet. It consisted of Build your own Burgers, Chicken Skewers, Penne Pasta with Marinara Sauce, French Fries, and Garden Salad (well, I think the salad was his mother’s addition). Mmmm! What more could you ask for?!
Candle Lighting Ceremony
After the meal service the guests were invited to join Max for his candle-lighting ceremony. A bar mitzvah candle-lighting ceremony is a wonderful way for the bar mitzvah boy to recognize and honor the important people in his life. There are traditionally 13 candles one for each year of the bar mitzvah boy’s life, some people add a 14th candle for good luck. The bar mitzvah boy chooses people to help him light each candle. This selection process should be well thought out. He should choose people whom have had a vast amount of influence on his life. This could be a close family members, a teacher, a friend; anyone that has significantly impacted his life. Max had also chosen a song to be played for each person (or group of people) that he called up to help.
Party Time!
The rest of the event was in the hands of Percy the DJ/MC from Feet First. He played games, hosted friendly competitions, and even offered dance instructions to the gals! Here he is showing off his Beyonce moves! All the single Ladies Percy was amazing – the kids loved him and he had such high energy the whole way through! Always making sure that Max was the focal point of the celebration!
Some friendly competition:
The whole gang!
