DIY
Continued from Page 9
from invitation ideas to decor and centerpieces. The Mitzvah Market,
another New York company, offers a website chock-full of ideas
from which you can draw inspiration for your own party.

With all these ideas floating in the virtual database, is the profes-
sional sphere of Bar/Bat Mitzvah planners being threatened?
Cigall Goldman, founder of mazelmoments.com, believes social
media, the DIY enthusiasts and event planners can go hand-in-hand.

“It’s funny because on the one hand, I think people like to do
things themselves,” she said. “But on the other hand, I think the
popularity of Pinterest and social media is creating a lot of ideas for
people and they’re finding it might be a little much for them because
there’s so many ideas going around.”
The plus side to these sites and the ability to easily find inspiration
online is that they provide more ideas that people can relate to the
event planners as they start the planning process.

“For image-based industries like event planning, Pinterest is
huge,” Goldman said. “I think people turn to Pinterest because it’s
an easy way to get a lot of ideas really quickly. It’s a great destination
for getting a lot of ideas in a quick manner.”
Stacey Kesselman is not a Pinterest user herself, but she does
visit the site to promote the work of her company, Exceptional
Events. The idea of Pinterest is good, she said, but oftentimes, the Bar/Bat
Mitzvah will come in with ideas they’ve seen on the site but she can’t
accommodate it, usually because of the venue size.

“It’s challenging — and helpful,” she said of the role social media
has played in recent years.

“The helpful part is they bring colors and pictures of things they
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A baseball-themed Bar Mitzvah centerpiece.

Pinterest like and don’t like. The challenging part is that sometimes the venue
doesn’t have what the picture shows. They want what’s in the picture.

It can all be modified. It’s not our goal to mimic Pinterest.”
Kesselman has been in the event planning business for over
10 years.

Born and raised in Newtown Square, Kesselman first started in
corporate event planning. When that market went south, she turned
instead to party planning and reinvented herself in the Bar/Bat Mitz-
vah service planning area.

Exceptional Events does everything from logos to favors with
the help of Kesselman’s “amazing” team.

For her, the business has remained something she truly enjoys
doing despite changing times and tastes. She follows trends of her
own, as well as whatever trends crop up as specific themes like “luau”
or “beach” themes become less popular.

Right now, the more popular themes aren’t themes at all but,
rather, “feels.”
A color might be a theme, or a certain feel might be the theme,
like a modern feel, she said.

She meets with families about six months prior to the big day
and follows up with meetings intermittently leading up to it to make
sure everything is still what the family wants.

“I love seeing everything we’ve worked on come together. The
months of planning and prep and meetings — on that day, when
everything gets put together, it’s awesome,” she said.

The work she does is the reason she believes the do-it-yourself
movement won’t get too far in the Bar/Bat Mitzvah realm.

“I don’t see it as a trend,” she said. “People have high hopes to do
it but as they get into the thick of it, there’s so much involved with
it — that’s why they need a planner.”
While she uses social media to promote her business and show
pictures from parties her company has done, she doesn’t see it as
the main competition but rather as an extra bit of help.

“I feel like it’s very helpful to prospective clients because I feel
like social media is a showcase for your work and for busy people
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