On Saturday, I was privileged to attend the Bat Mitzvah events of my faculty advisor's daughter, Sami. The events included the Shabbat (Sabbath) service on Saturday morning, followed by a luncheon for those who attended the service. And then later that night there was a party/dinner for Sami's friends (and some of Linda and Norman's family and friends).
Late last spring, Linda asked me if I would be interested in helping her with the Bat Mitzvah details. Now lets be clear - she did all the work of planning and organizing. My role was simply this: help design/create the centerpieces (she even did this - I just took her ideas/vision and refined it), be at the temple on Friday to set up the tables for the luncheon, and then be present at the events on Saturday to make sure that everything went smoothly and ended up in the right places. This is the kind of job that, frankly, I do well - I'm good at details and I'm good at knowing what needs to be done and good at observing what is happening around the room. I don't always like to do it (like its not always my favorite job at weddings) - because to do it well, you have to be necessarily outside of the event. In this case, it was perfect, because I was outside the event - so I was able to observe and help while still enjoying the food and meeting people, but not feeling bad when I had to leave to run errands or take stuff to the car. For this particular job, we agreed on a fee that I would receive. We also agreed that if I could find a helper for Friday and/or Saturday that they would also earn a small fee.
Linda gave me some supplies to work with in designing the centerpieces. Because Sami had asked all the guests to bring art supplies to donate to a local not-for-profit organization, The Friendship Circle, the centerpieces were to be primarily art supplies (with three gerber daisy's each). I created a few design options for her and sent her the pics. We decided on one that she liked and then later she came over and we played around with it a bit in person.
Above is one of the centerpieces. You can see that its like a little garden of art supplies with three tall gerber daisies. For the luncheon, my friend Lisa was my helper. We set up an assembly line for the centerpieces and once they were done, we set them all on purple squares on the tables, with jelly beans. Adorable!
The reception hall looked totally beautiful after we got it all set up.
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| kids tables |
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| the pretty purple tables |
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| I loved that the tables for the kids just said "Samantha's Friends" |
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| And the Jelly Belly's added so much brightness and fun to the table decorations. |
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| the whole room |
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| We used the extra centerpieces on the table-card table. |
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| the table cards were adorable. | | |
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After the luncheon was cleaned up and loaded into the car and van, I went to Lindas and switched out the daytime stuff for the night time stuff. Then I ferried her and Sami on some errands. Later, I had about an hour break and so I stopped for a pedicure (in Beverly Hills, so I felt swanky). I really needed that pedi by then. The finished product looked great and I got to wear my DKNY shoes with pride. Double pride, really, because I only paid $8.50 for them at Ross!
Before I put on those dancing shoes, though, I helped set up for the dinner events. This deal was pretty easy (comparatively). I created centerpieces using the recovered daisies from the earlier luncheon, and using candy for the kids tables.
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| Tables for the grown ups.... |
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| Kids' tables |
I think that Sami ended up having a really terrific time. She smiled non-stop the entire night - and most of the night I marveled at what it must be like to be 13 years old in 2010. Those kids were crazy!!
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| Linda and Sami |
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| Sami and her brother, Jeremy |
(another post to come about the Shabbat ceremony itself)
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