Does your Jewish son love Minecraft? If so, then it makes a great theme for his Bar Mitzvah! Here are some tips for throwing a Minecraft Bar Mitzvah! Our Minecraft Bar Mitzvah ideas and inspiration include some great Minecraft Bar Mitzvah invitation stationery sets, decor ideas, food and drink inspiration, and more! Read on!
These days, Bar Mitzvah parties are less traditional in style and lean more towards themes based on what your son loves. If your son is into gaming, and in particular he is into Minecraft and other pixel or pixelated cube style building block or construction games, then a Minecraft theme for his Bar Mitzvah is a great choice.
Minecraft is all the rage these days, as both teen boys and teen girls love to play it. These pixelated graphic games are in direct contrast to other high resolution, 3D, super realistic video games. The popularity of these pixel style games seems to defy what we all think kids should love. The graphics are intentionally old school retro pixel style and the game play is creative rather than directive. Players have a large amount of freedom in choosing how they play. Players get to build what they want on their own terms using textured cubes. This is what is called a 3D procedurally generated world. It’s a formula that is reminiscent of Lego construction building blocks and it’s a formula that works! Minecraft is incredibly popular. Minecraft is the best-selling PC game to date and the third best-selling video game of all time!
So, we should discuss what Minecraft is all about so that you can understand best how to use it for your theme. Basically, players can take rough 3D objects (generally cubes) and arrange them in a fixed grid pattern. The objects are meant to represent different materials, such as dirt, stone, various ores, water, lava, tree trunks, etc. For example, to the left is a Minecraft grass block… with grass on the top and dirt below. Players use rows of these to create sections of green grass in the game. They use the objects to create their 3D world. In addition to building or construction, there are also other modes to the game as well, including resource gathering, exploring, and combat.
The two main controllable players are Steve and Alex (Steve is shown above and to the right). There are also some living movable entities in Minecraft that are known as Mobs… short for mobile. Some examples of these are chickens, cows, sheep, pig, villager, creeper, zombie, skeleton, witch, wolf, etc. Some of these Mobs are hostile and some are not. I mention these Mobs because they can also be inspirations for your party decor. Creeper in particular is a popular Minecraft Mob.
Now that you have an idea about how the game looks, you can see how you can use elements of the game to make a theme. Because it is cube and pixel based like this, it is actually not too terribly hard to create interesting decor and food items.
So, first up. Invitations.
Minecraft Inspired Bar Mitzvah Invitation Suites
Minecraft inspired invitations feature the colors green, brown, grey, and black. They might be based on Minecraft’s pixel graphic look, with textured cubes or pixel patterns. Or invitation designs will have a gamer or technology based theme using high-tech or pixel fonts and geometric features. Minecraft itself is copyrighted, so designers must take this into account when designing invitation sets. I designed these two Minecraft inspired Bar Mitzvah invitation sets for Lemon Leaf Prints. These designs have similar colors, patterns, and pixelated graphics and fonts. Bar Mitzvah invitation stationery suites generally consist of an invitation, reception insert card, and RSVP card at a minimum. Thank you cards, mailing labels, and favor tags are also often considerations.
Minecraft Bar Mitzvah Party Decor and Ambience
Basically, when it comes to Minecraft party decor and ambience, you’ll see a lot of pixel patterns and cubes. The most basic of these patterns are formed with squares that are given different shades of color. For example, in the invitation set above, the “grass” is formed with squares made of different shades of green and the “dirt” is made of squares with different shades of brown. Jagged edges are formed by removing some green squares and making them brown instead. So, you don’t have a straight line of green. Since this is fairly simple to accomplish, you can likely make a lot of Minecraft decor items yourself. However, there are sites out there where you can purchase Minecraft party decor as well.
Here are some examples of some great stuff you can purchase online for Minecraft decor:
Along with this great giant foam creeper and Steve mask, you can also get Minecraft Lego, pixelated foam swords, mugs, a variety of foldable paper characters, posters, hats, Minecraft t-shirts, pins, and more at the Minecraft store. You can even get some wrapping paper.
Green helium balloons with Minecraft creeper faces and pixel patterned backdrops are perfect for decor items too. You can find lots of other Minecraft decor ideas on this Minecraft party ideas Pinterest board from Catch My Party.
Food and Drink Ideas for a Minecraft Bar Mitzvah
There are some great ideas out there for food and drink for a Minecraft themed party. I really love this one to the right. A creeper pizza! Click on the image to learn how to make this simple pizza. All teens will love it!
Other great ideas include TNT dynamite sticks made out of red licorice. You can get printable TNT wraps on Etsy. Just print them off and wrap a few red licorice sticks in them for a fun party treat.
You can also get printable Minecraft inspired beverage or water bottle labels from Etsy too. These are good for attaching to water bottles to add to decor. Or even for changing out the labels on pop bottles.
Another idea is to make standard party food and then just add Minecraft inspired labels to the food items or add creeper style faces to green cups.
You can also set up food stations on boxes with Minecraft patterns for a 3D look as shown below.
Generally, anything green goes. So green food and beverages is a good choice. A fun thing to do would be to make a green party punch and label it “Energy Potion”.
The game itself does contain food items. Not many, but you can perhaps use them for inspiration for your party food. It would be very authentic!
Some examples are pumpkin pie, mushroom stew, cooked salmon, golden carrot, enchanted golden apple, spider eye, cooked mutton, rotten flesh, etc. Note that some of these cause damage in the game.
This blog post has some great Minecraft food recipes that are perfect for the theme.
I think the best place to start is by looking at the link above for the food items players have available in the game and then use your imagination to create food items from those items. Label the food items with fun Minecraft styled labels, stack the food on some “Minecraft cubes”, and you’re pretty much good to go.
Finally, we discuss entertainment.
Entertainment for a Minecraft Bar Mitzvah
You need to make sure that everyone is having fun at your Minecraft Bar Mitzvah. Why not have a sword fighting competition? Competing players can wear Minecraft character masks and fight duels with foam Minecraft swords. Perhaps the challenge is to be the first to remove the other player’s mask using the foam swords.
In the game, players collect resources. A fun idea is to have a Minecraft themed scavenger hunt where guests are tasked with finding a variety of Minecraft resources. You might want your son to help you devise a Minecraft scavenger hunt, as he is the Minecraft expert, but the Minecraft Wiki can help as well.
Another idea is to have Minecraft Lego building competitions. Perhaps just to see who can build the best structure within a timed amount of time, say within 2 minutes.
And of course, any Minecraft party is not complete without a way for guests to play Minecraft. So setting up Minecraft play stations is a definite must.
For music, there are actually many, many Minecraft parody songs out there. Just play those! Minecraft is truly just that popular. In fact, it might be fun to play these songs along with their videos. Maybe if your son is quite talented he’ll make up his own Minecraft parody song and video for his Bar Mitzvah.
Final Thoughts
Well, that’s it for our Minecraft Bar Mitzvah party ideas. It’s a great theme! We’ve mentioned it here as a Bar Mitzvah theme, but there are so many girls that love this game as well that it also makes a fantastic Bat Mitzvah party idea. So don’t just think of it only for boys. This is the sort of thing that crosses gender barriers and there are ways to make it perfect for a girl too.
About Shannon
Shannon is a graphic designer for Wasootch, a special occasion stationery and gift shop that specializes in unique and affordable wedding and bridal shower stationery. Interested in Shannon's designs? Check out her shop on Zazzle, her shop on Etsy or check out her designs on her new partner website Lemon Leaf Prints.