Your birthday only comes once a year (unless you're born on February 29th, in which case you're a freak of nature anyways), so why not go balls to the wall in celebrating it? Spare no expense, make no concessions to common decency, and throw the party of your life. Not to be morbid, but every birthday could be your last, and you don't want to go to your grave knowing that you didn't party your hardest. In this article, we'll spotlight ten birthday parties that pushed the envelope, intentionally or not.
46-Hour Party
Typically, your birthday lasts 24 hours, same as everybody else. But German man Sven Hagemeier decided to play a little prank on the concept of time by having a
46 hour birthday. How'd he do it? On the special day, he hopped on a plane in Auckland, New Zealand and flew back across the International Date Line to Honolulu, Hawaii. By doing so he essentially set his clock back 20 hours, so when he touched down it was exactly midnight on the 24th again. His wife was waiting for him at the airport, and the pair enjoyed Hagemeier's birthday together. He also made the Guinness Book for his extra-long birthday.
Huge Egomaniac Party
We're going to be interspersing tales of celebrity birthday parties in this list along with normal folks, because when you have an insane amount of money you spend it on some really dumb stuff. Former American Idol host Simon Cowell is well-known for being full of himself, but his 50th birthday party took things to a very disturbing level. With a price tag of over
$1.5 million, the bash - hosted at the Wrotham Park manor in England - was a monument to Cowell's ego. The tablecloths were embroidered with his silhouette, waiters wore masks of his face, and a giant picture of Cowell's mug was projected on the front of the building.
Playboy Mansion Party
Turning 18 is one of the biggest milestones in American life. You can vote, be emancipated from your parents and die for your country. The only thing you can't legally do is drink. Unfortunately, when Jeff Lake threw his 18-year-old daughter Olivia a lavish,
Playboy-themed party in January 2015, he forgot that bit. Two hundred thirsty teens showed up for the bash, which featured scantily-clad women and lots of booze. Olivia's mother had previously Tweeted her daughter, calling her the "baddest bitch in town" and telling her "don't get arrested." Hey, Mom: maybe a little more show, a little less tell with these important moral lessons.
Toddler Fashion Show
Most of these insane parties are held for adults, or at least teens who can appreciate them. But this one boggles the mind, as a Chinese mother spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a lavish birthday party for her
two year old daughter. Themed as a fashion show, the woman dropped $160,000 on designer outfits from Dior, Prada and Louis Vuitton for her toddler and rented out a hotel in Shanxi province for her to walk the runway in front of guests. The whole spectacle was absurd, compounded by the fact that the kid will probably not remember a minute of it.
Finance Industry 60th
If you were to come up with a most hated class of people for
the early 2000s, "Wall Street traders" would probably rank slightly lower than Al-Quaeda. The financial industry spent money like it was water in those days, and one of the most outrageous examples was Blackstone Group chairman
Stephen Schwarzman. For his 60th birthday, Schwarzman dropped a flabbergasting $3 million on renting out the 7th Regiment Armory in New York and having Rod Stewart play a private concert.
Celebrity B-Ball Jam
Kanye West doesn't do anything small-time, but his recent 38th birthday party was so over the top that it's absurd. Wife
Kim Kardashian rented out the entire Staples Center in Los Angeles so Yeezy could play a game of basketball with a bunch of his celebrity friends, including Justin Bieber and Pusha T. A few legit NBA players also showed up to lend their hoops expertise. She also hired the Laker Girls to cheer from the sidelines. Just renting the Staples Center came in at a cool $110,000, but this pair has more scratch than they know what to do with, so whatever. Greatest birthday of all time.
Massive Farmhouse Party
In August of 2014, a Michigan guy named James Taylor decided to throw a birthday party for a friend at the Mecosta County farmhouse that's been in his family for a hundred years. Little did he know that the bash would rapidly spiral out of control to involve a whopping
2,000 people from as far away as Miami, Florida. He put the word out on Facebook at 4PM the day of the party and was flabbergasted by the response. Taylor's house was so packed that people could not move from room to room, and six drug overdoses were reported during the festivities.
Five Parties In Five Time Zones
Thankfully, the "celebutante" era that saw no-talent dunderheads like
Paris Hilton gain worldwide fame seems to be over. Hilton, who got attention for no other reason than by being rich and tasteless, celebrated her 21st birthday in typically grandiose form by throwing a
five-day bash that included shindigs in London, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Tokyo and New York. Guests traveled the world with Hilton and her entourage at a reported cost of $75,000 per person.
Dutch Birthday Riot
Social media has completely changed the way people get invited to parties. It used to be the host had to tell you directly or you had to know somebody who was going. But in the era of open Facebook profiles, no party remains secret for long. A Dutch teenager named Merthe posted an invite to her bash, but instead of clicking "Family And Friends" on the privacy settings, she left it on "Everyone." Police estimate some 30,000 people received the invitation, and
3,000 of them showed up to the small town of Haren looking to party. The girl and her parents were evacuated to a safe location and riot police were called in to disperse the crowd, which involved a good deal of skull cracking.
Leonardo DiCaprio's 40th
We're going to close this one out with another celebrity party, because the rich and famous sure know how to do it up. Leonardo DiCaprio is well known as a serious partier, and when he turned 40 his friends spared no expense to throw him a massive party at West Hollywood's Soho House. The private club was packed wall-to-wall with models, and attendees report an insane amount of money was spent on some of the highest-caliber booze in the world. One guest dropped a
half a million on ten bottles of Ace of Spades champagne, for God's sake.