(If you’re confused as to why this guide begins at #27, click here for Part 1)
You’ve survived the service. You’ve properly enclosed your cash or check into an appropriately themed card and sealed the envelope (remembering at the last minute to add your name to the card). But you’ve only just begun your journey. Consult your original invitation, curse yourself for accidentally throwing out that helpful directions card, drive successfully to the proper location, reluctantly hand your keys to the valet knowing how long it will take to get your car back at night’s end, and make your way into the main event.
THE PARTY, HOUR 1 – THE “COCKTAIL” HOUR
- When you arrive at that evening’s party for the “cocktail hour”, you will immediately notice the attire worn by guests. Adult women will be wearing stunning dresses from Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, while the teenage girls will be dressed like hookers.
- Concurrently, the suits worn by both boys and men will be at least two sizes too big. This will not matter, for within the first 10 minutes all boys will deposit their suit jackets on the floor of the reception hall, and will later return home with the wrong coat belonging to a camp friend from Massachusetts.
- As you enter, adults and children will split into two rooms. The kids will move to a room filled with games, candy, unlimited pizza and organized activities, while the adults will file into a room with elegant music and fine passed hors d’oeuvres.
- Most adults secretly wish they were in the kid’s room.
- The name “cocktail hour” is misleading. Despite the moniker, this is not really about cocktails. It’s about FOOD. As Jews, we are trained at birth to crave appetizers, and consumer research shows that when given the choice between a libation or a toast point with filet, Jews will choose the beef 89.7% of the time.
- The sheer volume of food offered during the cocktail hour will be staggering. You will be offered a stuffed mushroom or a piece of meat on a stick at least once every 14.3 seconds.
- Despite this, you will still complain about the length of the line at the moo shu chicken buffet table.
- No matter how elegant the appetizers, nothing will be more treasured or fought over than a passed tray of mini hot dogs wrapped in puffed pastry.
- And they won’t come easy. A Bar Mitzvah professional knows to scope out all entrances and exits to the room like a secret service agent, eventually positioning themselves as near as possible to the entrance used by servers and aggressively attacking the mini hot dog server until there is nothing left on their tray besides parsley and a lonely dish of brown mustard. If you desire the mini hot dogs, don’t make the rookie mistake of getting stuck in the middle of the room with the dieters. Be a pro.
- This strategy should also be employed for potato pancakes.
- Conversely, take your time with the chicken satay. There will be plenty of those left.
- If you are male, within 10 minutes of entering the event you will spill some kind of red sauce on your white dress shirt. You will attempt to cover this up with an awkward combination of club soda and potato pancake grease (assuming you positioned yourself properly, see previous note) and hope your wife is too distracted by the action at the sushi table to notice.
- You will quickly surmise that a Jewish man must have three hands. There is no other explanation as to how he manages to hold his wife’s plate of salmon, her Cosmopolitan, and either her purse or his own fought-for mini hot dog without the pile tumbling onto his already-stained dress shirt. This may also explain why most Jewish men are thin, as they lack the necessary number of available appendages to hold or utilize a fork.
Recent Comments