When it comes to birthday parties, 40 is the new 50

After the rush of weddings has slowed and the crazed days of diapers have waned, there’s a new celebration filling San Franciscans’ social calendars: fabulous 40. Locals are reveling in the joys of aging by throwing blowout destination birthdays to ring in their fourth decade.

Luxury travel advisor Shelley Rapp, the founder of Rapture Travels in New York, has put together a number of milestone birthday extravaganzas, usually for 40th and 50th celebrations. “I would say the uptick in this trend started in 2017 and really took off for trips planned in 2018.”

As her 40th birthday approached, San Francisco’s Christina Trujillo-Ayoub, director of marketing at Kenu Inc., knew she wanted to do something special for the milestone.

“I went back and forth on do we take a big trip somewhere, do we do something with just family, or do I throw a big party?” She opted for the party, hosting a hundred-person bash in SoCal, complete with festive cocktails, an elegant al fresco dinner, and post-meal dancing and revelry at the Montage Laguna Beach, the same five-star seaside hotel she held her wedding at eight years earlier.

Trujillo-Ayoub even enlisted the same all-star team of event planners and florists. Unlike her wedding, however, this soiree was solely about encouraging guests, most of whom flew in for the night, to let loose and have fun; metallic disco-ball-like spheres were suspended overhead and silver sequins sheathed a well-trafficked dance floor while a band performed favorite hits.

A playfully irreverent atmosphere is part of the trend, says Rachael Silard, owner of Bay Area boutique event planning and design company Ruby & Rose. “We’re seeing that people are more willing to take bigger risks than they did with their weddings because you don’t have that same social pressure to conform to a certain way of doing things, a la Emily Post.”

Trujillo-Ayoub’s guest list was similarly liberated from formal obligation. She kept it to people who helped her grow through all the different chapters of her life. “I had a rough second part of my 30s health-wise and I lost both of my grandmothers, so this (party) was a good excuse to celebrate everything and come out into this new decade with a bang,” she said.

San Francisco native Laurie Hanna Carrade, whose family owns Hanna Winery in Sonoma County, eschewed a large party for her 40th — and all the work and expense that entails — for the chance to “spoil a handful of couples in Paris.” At least a small group was the plan, but Carrade jokes that what she didn’t realize was “that if you invite people to Paris, they’ll all come. So it wasn’t really a ‘handful’ of couples, but it was a cool way not to have to invite 300 people.” In all, the celebration entailed 18 of Carrade and her husband’s intimate friends, all San Francisco couples who jetted across the globe to fete her milestone.

Guests received airplane comfort kits prior to takeoff and Rapture Travels prepared an enviable itinerary. It included a French cooking class, jaunt to Champagne, visit to the new Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris and dining and nightlife reservations at hot spots around the city. The trip culminated on the final night in a birthday dinner at Monsieur Bleu in the Palace de Tokyo. Guestswere served on the patio inside a state-of-the-art transparent inflatable bubble that insulated them from the chilly weather without interfering with their view of the Eiffel Tower. After dinner, they danced until dawn, when it was time to head to the airport.

It’s seemingly counterintuitive that these destination birthdays would have such a high turnout, but Carrade believes it’s all about timing. At this point of life, she explains, the kids are old enough that the parents feel comfortable — and ready — to leave them for an adult-only trip.

Trujillo-Ayoub echoes the sentiment: “When you’re 40, the majority of people have kids, they’re established in their career, they’re scheduled, it’s everyday life. So having these 40th parties gives us something out of the box to look forward to.” Silard expands on why the timing is ideal, pointing out that 40 often coincides with financial-life milestones like “achieving significant success in your career, or just finally having paid off your student loans and feeling flush with some disposable income.” Combine this, Silard says, with the fact that many people’s weddings happened a decade ago and they’re ready to plan another big bash.

One big caveat to destination 40ths is that while guests are game to travel, they most likely have lots of responsibilities that require advance planning.

Evan Meagher, vice president of finance at Logikcull, sent out the save-the-date for his upcoming 40thth birthday in Mexico two years in advance. He’s planning a redo of his raucous 30th birthday, held at disco queen Gloria Gaynor’s palatial Acapulco estate.

“It’s not like we’re 29 going on 30,” he says. “Everyone has kids and professional obligations. You’ve got to get in front of it.” More than a personal milestone for Meagher, his 40th birthday party is an excuse to get his best friends together, many of whom he doesn’t get to see regularly anymore despite that they live down the road from him in San Francisco.

“You will never see them if you don’t make it happen,” he says. Beyond having to plan early, Meagher expects his birthday trip will be pretty similar to how it was a decade ago. “We’re certainly older and theoretically wiser, but I assume people will still do the same stuff we like to do — we just don’t get a chance to do it as often anymore.”

When given the chance, however, no one knows how to party better than 40-year-olds.