Minnesotans seeking 'biggest and best birthday' turn to slumber party planners

As her daughter's 10th birthday approached, Sarah Eull discovered that the classic kids' slumber party could do better than a mishmash of bedrolls scattered on the floor like so many empty pizza boxes. On Facebook, the St. Michael, Minn., mom saw a friend's photos of a cute little tent village, bedecked with matching bedding, accessories and décor — a sleepover worthy of the social media era.

So Eull booked a slumber party service with Briena Nyquist of Tiny Tent Event Co., whose tie-dye themed gathering delighted Eull's daughter and her friends.

"The girls watched a movie in their tents, they were playing games inside their tents, they wanted to be in their tents the entire time," Eull said. When her son requested a tent party for his 8th birthday, she booked Nyquist's services again, this time with a video game theme.

For some parents, especially those with disposable income and multiple kids, a few rounds of the youth birthday party circuit can make museum outings and bounce-house rentals start to feel like "Been there, done that, ate the cupcakes."

"When you have three kids, you think, 'Where am I gonna go now for a birthday party to try to keep it new, and fresh, and mix things up, and have it be fun and exciting?' " Eull said. For her, the tent event was definitely novel. "It's not the movie theater. It's not bowling. It's not Sky Zone. It's something different."

COVID closures of party rooms at Chuck E. Cheese, etc., helped accelerate the deluxe slumber-party trend. Services cropped up from Los Angeles to Ankeny, Iowa, with prices starting at around $200. The most Instagram-ready dreamscapes, such as the one Kim Kardashian hosted for her daughter, are bedecked in tea lights and bunting, or accompanied by selfie stations and candy buffets.

"They think it's awesome," Nyquist said of the moms who book her service. "They're trying to have the biggest and best birthday — that's the clientele."

Party providers

Tiffany Ohotto, of Tiffany's Picnic and Parties, documented her childhood sleepovers with first-generation video cameras, filming dance-offs and other wee-hour antics. "Some of my favorite memories of growing up were of getting together with friends or cousins and staying up way too late and playing games." And making prank calls? "Absolutely," she enthused.

Ohotto, who lives in Blaine, and her twin sister, Brittany Kozan, of Minnetrista, have five kids between them. So they launched their party business as somewhat of an extension of the sleepovers they were already hosting.

Most of Minnesota's handful of slumber-party providers are small, mom-owned businesses. Nyquist started hers after the birth of her third daughter, as did Bree Egan, of Slumber Party Solutions in Winona, Minn.

Birthday parties for elementary-age girls are most common, typically with four to six tents, although Egan once did 12. Parties for younger kids are often not so successful, Egan observed. "They all end in tears, and everyone wants to go home," she said.

Local planners tend to have several tent parties per weekend — often booked by moms, though sometimes by grandparents hosting out-of-town grandchildren visiting for the holidays.

Most party themes are youthful and feminine ("Rainbow" and "Unicorn"), although they include "Sports" and "Camping." And most providers supplement the tent setups with extras. Egan, for example, includes goodie bags for kids (eye mask, toothbrush, toothpaste) and a "survival pack" for mom (ear plugs, tea bag, bath bomb). For a fee, she offers decorate-your-own pillowcases, terrarium kits and a tabletop s'mores roaster.

Party providers say they love the creativity involved in designing the chic sleepscapes and the joy they give their clients. But they acknowledge that all their upgrades can't prevent the inevitable crash in a sleepover's aftermath.

"When I go to set up, everyone's so excited and the birthday person just wants to help me with everything," Egan said. "But then the next day when I'm there, they've hardly slept — you know when you've just had so much fun you're wiped? — they don't even look at me."

Losing sleep

As popular as fancy slumber parties have become, "the commodification of a homemade ritual," as a recent New York Times' headline described the trend, keeps others awake at night.

Bill Doherty, a professor in the University of Minnesota's department of family social science, doesn't want to be the "birthday party Scrooge." But he's concerned about how the "arms race" of extravagant kids' parties (an inevitable offshoot of the elaborate wedding proposal trend, he noted) has come to sleepovers, one of the last bastions of simple, low-key fun.

More than a decade ago, Doherty created a movement called Birthdays Without Pressure, to increase awareness about the unintended consequences of over-the-top parties. "Unless parents are very mindful about what their own values are, it becomes the new norm that you aspire to," he said. "And then kids begin to feel entitled to something extravagant."

Ever-more elaborate parties can cause parents stress about throwing a party that suggests their kid is just as special as everybody else's, Doherty said. "We talk about peer pressure for kids, but there's parental peer pressure, too."

But many slumber party clients — often busy moms — are thinking less about escalating party expectations than the lifeline of outsourcing the work.

Though Nyquist's family is baffled by her business — "They're like, 'Who would ever pay for that?'" — she has no shortage of clients who are relieved to hand off the setup, takedown and cleanup.

And a lot of parents prefer to offer an experience instead of more stuff, Egan noted. "Especially by the time your kid is 8 or 9, you have a houseful of toys and everything," she said.

While Ohotto identifies with the old-school approach — "I was on the floor with a sleeping bag, too" — she takes any suggestion that her parties are a bit over the top as a compliment. "I think, 'Well, good, it should be a little extra special.'"

Not just for kids

Last summer, Kelsey Sorenson of Carver was looking for an extra special way to celebrate her sister-in-law's birthday — the first she would spend without her husband, Sorenson's brother, who had died the previous year.

Sorenson said the surprise of Ohotto's seven-person boho-chic tentscape blew her sister-in-law away. "We were all brought to tears over how beautiful it was," Sorenson recalled.

And not only was the tent party more affordable than renting a home or hotel rooms, but it created a collective gathering space for the group that facilitated conversation late into the night.

"We were up until well past midnight," Sorenson said. "Most of us are moms, so that's not something we do."