YOU know kids’ birthday celebrations have gone out of control when the Carlyle Hotel offers $5,000 Madeline parties for 50 – and nobody blinks.
The $100-a-head affair doesn’t even include cake, which runs an extra $13 to $15 per guest extra.
Not to be outdone, Kidville, NY – opening on the Upper East Side in January – has event packages topping out at a $4,950 party for 20, featuring clowns from the Big Apple Circus. “When it comes to birthday parties, there is no price limit,” said Jessica Hochman, Kidville’s special events director. “Parents will spend.”
And spend they do – even for 1-year-olds who couldn’t care less.
Never mind homemade cakes and dime-store balloons – party industry people say the $5,000 tots’ birthday bash has become common in the New York area.
Randi Walz, a television sales exec, annually has $5,000 birthday fetes for her daughter Jordan, 5, and son, Phillip, 4.
“I’m very anal about my parties. That’s the working mom’s guilt,” Walz said. “It’s a birthday party a week. You want your kid’s party to be really special.
“Do people compete? Yes. We’ve never been to a house party – you’d think there’d be at least one – or to a make-your-own pizza party at Pizzeria Uno. But nobody does that, including me.”
The expenses are varied. Every year, Walz creates a different theme. She hires different characters ($350 a pop) to meet and greet the kids, and a photographer to snap photos of the partygoers. And then come the extras – tattoo stations, face-painting and jumpy castles.
This year, Walz paid $400 for an entertainer with exotic animals, including a blue-tongued lizard, a chinchilla and a python.
Elisa Strauss, owner of Confetti Cakes on the Upper West Side, is well-poised to cash in on the posh party craze. Her customers, she says, think nothing of spending $1,700 for a Cookie Monster cake.
“First-year birthday party cakes are really big,” said Strauss, who charges up to $6,000 for her creations.
“The little child won’t remember, but it’s the first time the family often gets to meet the baby. It’s a real celebration. Parents really go out of their way to throw a big party.”
That’s good news for Magic-Al Garber, “magician to the stars” who’s been hired by Howard Stern and Robert De Niro, among other famous parents.
Garber charges $650 for a show that lasts 45 minutes to an hour. “Just last week, I did a double triplet party with a carnival and 100 children in Long Island,” he said.
Not surprisingly, this over-the-top trend has its detractors.
“I just attended a first-year birthday party luncheon for 100 people,” said Barri Leiner, co-author with Marie Moss of a book called “Flea Market Baby.”
“I thought, this is a cocktail party. It has nothing to do with the baby and the sweet memory of being one.”
Lucy Sykes, designer of LucySykesBaby, says she’s been to many grand first-birthday parties on the rooftop and “white room” of Soho House, which has hosted about one children’s birthday party a month since it opened in June 2003.
Even though Sykes and her 14-month-old son, Healthcliff, travel with a well-heeled crowd, she rejects the mandate that a baby’s party must be lavish.
“Anybody can bake a cake and invite some people over,” Sykes said. “The party can be a splurge or a steal. It’s good fun for the parents. Babies don’t really know what’s going on.”
