The Rise of Elaborate Adult Birthday Celebrations and Their Social Impact

MikeFest takes place every year, over the August bank holiday weekend, in a large leafy garden on the Cornish coast. Birthday boy Michael’s nearest and dearest turn up in their sparkliest gear (as per the invitation) with tents tucked under their arms. Masks with his face printed on them are handed out, as are handheld fans and sippy cups branded with each guest’s name. Organised fun ensues, including a compulsory talent show. Michael always wins first place with his interpretive dance routine.

Michael is not turning 10; he is about to be 44. And he accepts the title of “birthdayzilla”, admitting that he’s guilt-tripped friends who were unable to make it and barred those who miss two festivals in a row from future events. But he’s quick to defend his fellow birthday fanatics. “It doesn’t feel like there’s much to celebrate these days, and it’s harder than ever to get people together. So yes, I’m militant about my birthday,” he says. “I just think: I’ve managed to build a life I like and a network of people I love, why not make a fuss about it? I don’t think expecting them to show up for me once a year is such a big ask.”

While you may still be on the waitlist for a ticket to MikeFest, I’m sure you’ve noticed the ballooning of birthday culture. Perhaps you were added to a group chat against your will, its title crowded with cake emojis. Maybe a save-the-date arrived on creamy card bearing only one name in cursive font. Adult birthday celebrations are getting bigger, splashier and heavier with meaning, now jostling with weddings for a place at the pinnacle of our social calendars. Since when did they become such a big deal?

Where once a slice of cake sufficed to ring in a new age, today it’s not unusual to throw a fully catered party, rope your friends into a series of activities or organise a group holiday abroad. Lauren, a 29-year-old from Edinburgh, has already run through her annual leave allowance. “I’ve been to eight 30ths this year and the most low-key was a dinner in a private room that still set me back £100,” she says. “I’ve been to a castle in Scotland for a murder mystery weekend; a house party where we all took part in a quizshow about the birthday girl; a weekend of live music in Marseille; and a night out involving a salsa lesson and karaoke. It is draining my bank account, but once you say yes to one friend’s birthday it feels very loaded to say no to another. And you start to feel you deserve payback, so you plan your own huge thing and become part of the problem.”

Lauren has witnessed first-hand how quickly a birthday can breed a tyrant. One of her friendships is hanging by a thread after an old schoolmate berated her for announcing she was pregnant during their “birthday month”. “There’s something to be said about the main-character energy of my generation – we are all the stars of our social profiles, and we all like a bit of attention – but I think we’re losing the plot,” she says. “Not all of these big birthdays are about optics, but a lot of them are, and that’s when the time and expense of being a guest starts to grate.”

Birthdays are highly emotive because they act as mirrors. As American historian Howard P Chudacoff wrote in his 1989 book How Old Are You?, they “provide a milestone by which individuals can compare their status, accomplishment and appearance with other people who are the same age. It’s kind of like a train: are you ahead of time, on time or behind time?” For some, they’re a day to get through as quietly as possible, while others see them as a life-affirming moment to gather all their people around them. There seems to be a gender divide: according to a YouGov poll, women are twice as likely as men to see a big birthday as a chance to celebrate. Michael (of MikeFest fame) wonders if this is linked to “the outdated sense that organising a party or openly asking for what you need” – namely, some company on your special day – “is inherently unmasculine”. But the clearest distinction runs along generational lines, with people in their 20s, 30s and 40s being much more likely to treat their birthday as a major event.

For this generation, the traditional milestones that once clustered around this time of life have become less attainable – and in some cases, desirable. The latest ONS data shows that the number of people getting married in England and Wales continues to fall year on year, and among those who do get married, the median age is at historic highs of 34.8 for men and 33 for women. Last year, the birthrate was at its lowest since 1977 and the average age of a first-time homeowner climbed to 34. There are many reasons, from political failings to the tectonic plates of our culture shifting beneath our feet, but the common denominator is financial squeeze.

Oyinda sent save-the-dates almost a year in advance for her 30th: four days in Mykonos that she wanted to treat “like a wedding”. Her guests arrived at a villa decorated with her childhood photos and were given personalised gift bags and a printed itinerary including a meal made by a private chef, a boat trip and several beach clubs, all of which she saved up to subsidise. “Growing up, I thought I’d have reached lots of milestones by 30, but for people my age things like getting married and buying a house require a lot of money,” she says. “We still want to lean into life experiences and be celebrated even when we may not achieve those things. I wanted to go all out for my 30th and be as extra as I could be, to celebrate how much I’ve grown as a person and the friends I’ve made over three decades.”

Krisha, who flew to the Dominican Republic for a week of hiking, safaris, horse riding and massages to mark a new friend’s birthday, feels similarly – why not “spend on a bucket-list experience” in a time when saving for a house deposit feels futile? She also flags the double standards when you’re rallying around one person versus a couple. “I find it interesting that when I tell people I flew across the world for a birthday party they say it’s insane, but when it’s for a wedding they don’t question it.”

Where people put their money is changing, but what about when you can’t afford it full stop? Polly from the Midlands felt backed into a corner by her friend’s many invitations, which came to feel like a referendum on their relationship. “She had several events planned for her 40th, ranging from a trip to Portugal to smaller pub gatherings. She wanted to stretch things out across the year, but it came with a lot of friend guilt for me,” Polly says. “I really struggled to tell her that I couldn’t afford that much. I had a lot of anxiety trying to think of my wording and excuse. I feel as if I’ve now been put in a different tier to her other friends who earn high salaries – I can always tell now that the ‘no pressure’ comments are targeted at me and I feel like the poor friend holding back the group.”

She and the birthday girl have known each other for a long time, but the different value they each place on birthdays has given Polly pause. “I love to see my friend having fun, celebrating herself and living her best life, but it’s quite excessive just for a birthday,” she says. “To me, age and numbers are arbitrary and I prefer to celebrate achievements or special occasions: engagements, weddings, promotions, babies. Personally, I’d always choose to keep things small. An evening laughing over wine, a perfectly picked card – those are more than enough.”

Although there’s evidence of pharaohs putting on feasts in ancient Egypt, the adult birthday party is a relatively recent phenomenon, picking up steam in the west around the 1900s as a way for wealthy people to show off their social standing. Anna Goldfarb, friendship expert and author of Modern Friendship: How to Nurture Our Most Valued Connections, says commercial venues have played a role in making showy celebrations mainstream. “Most of our grandparents would have spent their birthday with family at home, but in the 70s and 80s suburban businesses like cinemas and fast-food chains started offering kids’ parties as a way to drum up profit,” she says. “Those kids grew up with the idea that a birthday equals a big gathering where you get all this attention. Huge parts of pop culture, like MTV’s My Super Sweet 16, have only added to the feeling that you should get to be a prince or princess for a day.” Many cultures’ coming-of-age traditions have come to be associated with big parties, from bar- and batmitzvahs to quinceañeras.

Of course, adding social media to the mix has been like dousing a fire with petrol. We see how thousands of other people – including the ultra-rich and terminally attention-hungry – are celebrating themselves and our visions of a low-key picnic in the park start to wilt. The baseline of normal gets skewed by Dua Lipa dancing on a chartered yacht for her 30th, or Kris Jenner being serenaded by Bruno Mars at 70. Even for those of us who aren’t millionaires, the visibility of being online ups the ante on a day that can already feel like a litmus test for how loved we are.

“I have seen adults have full meltdowns, and they’re not bad people, they’ve just got these very set ideas of how the day should go,” says Tom, a photographer based in Brighton. “Recently I was hired to work a party and the person redid their entrance three times, because the crowd wasn’t screaming loudly enough. She actually grabbed a microphone to shout at her friends and family: ‘That will look shit on TikTok, do it again.’”

The behaviour of some birthday divas can cause lasting reputational damage. Oliver’s cousin wanted her garden party to look perfect, but her preoccupation with perception rubbed him up the wrong way. “She had quite a specific dress code: she wanted everyone to dress in an outfit inspired by her, because she’s had many wild fashion eras. But the week before the party she became this monster on WhatsApp, demanding to see pictures of everyone’s outfits and giving us notes,” he says.

“Things got worse the day before, when she sent this long message saying that the expense of hiring a marquee and decorations and huge floral arrangements was higher than she’d realised, and could we all bring £50 in cash to chip in. It was the tackiest thing, and it put people in a bad mood. But you wouldn’t know it from all the staged photos of us laughing and nursing the one watery cocktail we were handed. The whole thing just left a bad taste because it was like she cared more about pulling off this Pinterest board vision than actually spending time with us.”

Even when you’re not modelling your event on the Met Gala, a mismatch between expectation and reality still stings. Amina, who was raised in a family “that didn’t really do Christmas but always made a big deal of birthdays”, invited 100 people to a London park to play games and ring in her 30th. When the forecast said rain, she moved it indoors to a bar – and only 10 people showed up. “I didn’t want the people who were there to think I was ungrateful or a brat, but they could tell I was hurt. I don’t want to need other people’s validation to feel good on my birthday, but it made me spiral about why my friends jumped at the chance to flake out.”

On reflection, Amina realised that “some people just don’t register birthdays the way I do. I was really upset with one of my close friends who turned up hours late and couldn’t even remember my age. Then I recalled the time when I’d just got home from backpacking, had zero money in my account, and was sitting doing some work in a cafe. The waiter brought over chai and a samosa and said that same friend had called up and had it sent over. They’ve shown me care in other ways, so maybe it doesn’t make sense to judge our whole friendship on one day.”

Goldfarb believes that the weight we’re putting on birthdays now tracks with a wider sociological trend around how we relate to one another. “Friendships used to be based on favours and context – something that researchers call ‘social identity support’. Your friends were all people who lived nearby, knew your family and would come through for you in a pinch,” she says. “But now we tend to outsource favours: we call an Uber to pick us up from the airport or hire someone to look after our cat. Our friendships are based more around entertainment and pleasure, so the group trip or party becomes the focal point. Plus, we move around a lot more. We can have friends who know nothing about where we grew up or what we’re like at home, and we crave the context that deepens those bonds.”

This is why, even if you’re not usually the type to covet the limelight or love socialising in large groups, you may still feel the pull to have a birthday that brings all the threads of your life together. “I think people are having more elaborate events to recreate that feeling of interconnected community. To have the friend from school meet the colleague, or the cousin meet the partner, means being recognised for all the roles you play in your life. It makes you feel whole,” says Goldfarb.

This rings true for Kejal, who is treating her next birthday as a way to honour the circle she’s gathered around her. “Turning 40 feels different to other birthdays. At this age, I’m crystal clear about who gives me energy, and my friendships are a reflection of who I am,” she says. “What I want most is for the weekend to be about connection, not just a boozy dinner and a hangover. I want us to leave with core memories.”

We live in an age where we have less to call our own. Fewer of us have homes we can freely decorate in a style that represents us, and even smaller identity markers such as music and films are streamed, not physically held. Against this backdrop, it makes sense that people are treating their birthdays as an opportunity to express who they are. For Kejal, it’s “my chance to celebrate the achievements of the last 40 years, to have the people who’ve championed me in the room, and to say thank you, properly, in a way that is uniquely me”.

For all the tales of smiling extortion and tantrums over RSVPs, the majority of people going big on their birthdays are seeking the same thing: meaningful togetherness. Perhaps the only way to get all the people you love in one place these days is to promise them the time of their lives. Or, at the very least, second place in the talent show.