August13
Well, first things first this morning: I hope you saw that I found Clay’s house key last night!!! I had planned for a locksmith to come today to take the whole doorknob out of the house and put a new one in, so you can imagine my relief right about now.
I woke up this morning to a comment Clay left on that post after I had gone to bed last night:
“but you didn’t tell the good part of that conversation… you know… where you ran up the driveway in your pjs and high heels to see if the key was the right one! hahahaha — i have the feeling this is going to be an eventful chapter in my life.”
As soon as I read his comment, reality flashed right before my eyes: Clay has a blog. That I’ve already shown you the link to. Which means you’re probably going to read the stories about me I don’t usually post (i.e. running up the driveway in high heels for crying out loud) because Clay’s probably going to post them on his blog.
I am a wee bit nervous now.
Also: Clay, you have no idea just how eventful this next chapter of your life is going to be now Cate and I are involved in it.
On a different note, I opened my Facebook inbox a couple of days ago to find a sweet message from my eighth grade homeroom teacher (who, for the record, was one of my absolute favorite teachers ever!). Her pre-teen daughter is having a birthday slumber party this weekend and, knowing that Starlite did plenty of sleepovers over the last seven years, she wanted to know if I might have any tips for her. I believe her exact quote was “the teacher has become the student.”
Well, ma’am, I hope you brought your Trapper Keeper notebook today because I am about to school you in the art of the pre-teen sleepover.
Now, that may sound a bit presumptuous but I am prepared to defend my title of Planner of the Ultimate Pre-Teen Sleepovers by displaying one very significant photograph:

That’s right, people. Nearly 300 middle school girls in one night. Like, for real.
With Starlite, we hosted a weekly program in the schools one day a week at each school (so, ten schools equaled ten separate programs a week — obviously, we had a large enough team to hold some programs simultaneously). Once a semester, however, we held a sleepover event for the first 300 middle school girls who arrived (in the early days, it wasn’t always 300 there — but as we began adding schools and getting more girls, we eventually had to draw the line at 300 girls per event for obvious reasons).
I’ve received a few other emails lately from various youth pastors / staff who want to know if I have any tips for their upcoming events, so I decided to combine one request into a three-part blog series, all of which will be posted today (morning, noon and night!). Over the course of the day, I’ll be posting various things we learned that you can recreate in your church or just in your living room. Even if you’re not planning an event, I think you might like a “behind the scenes” look at part of my job for the past few years.
So… first things first!
Holding an event for minors that was as big in attendance as our events were meant that we had to somehow combine fun and safety, all whilst wearing our cutest pajamas.

By the fifth year of Starlite, we had even taken our act on the road, hosting our sleepover at a large church about an hour from us. Can you recognize who that girl in the front of the bus might be? I bet you’d know her if you could hear that country accent of hers!

I’m not silly enough to think I’m an “expert” when it comes to pre-teen sleepovers but, after hosting thousands of girls at them in the last few years, I do have a few tips to pass your way whether you’re helping your youth pastor plan something for the girls in your church or whether your daughter is turning 12 years old and wants to have 12 of her friends over for the night.
First off: registration. Okay, I’m going to be straight up with you: I think that, anytime you have an event — whether it’s for 300 girls or three — you need to have permission forms signed by parents if the girls attending are under the age of 18. During the course of Starlite’s history, we experienced a tornado a few miles from us, a fire in the same room as our event and a minor medical emergency (all at separate events). No one was injured or hurt during any of these events, but if they had of been, we had very strong permission forms already signed (often requiring notarization, something we provided at the door).
I know it’s a bit “Sally Safety” to suggest that a mom should draw up a permission form for the parents of the girls coming to her daughter’s birthday slumber party, but I think that with all the things that times have changed, you really can’t protect yourself enough. Another tip that would make your pre-teen daughter hate me: I would limit cell phone use, including texting. We actually didn’t allow cell phones at our events; our volunteers and leaders had cell phones on them at all times in case of emergencies and girls were never kept from calling a parent if they requested to do so. Our decision to prohibit cell phones wasn’t popular with the pre-teen set, but we never once had to deal with inappropriate pictures being sent from the bathroom stall either.
(By the way, if you think that kind of stuff isn’t happening, think again. In the last six months, I’ve talked to at least four different girls in their early twenties — good girls who sincerely love God — who have fallen in the trap of sending inappropriate pictures via their cell phones just to get — or sometimes try to keep — a guy’s attention.)
Registration was a big deal for us, requiring a team to check girls in, go through their bags (oh yes we did!) and make sure parents or legal guardians had identification them for notarization reasons.

But once the girls were inside, the fun began! Our events always included a full spa where girls could receive a manicure, pedicure and make-up application courtesy of our college-aged volunteers. For the first few years, we used to offer hairstyles, too. We never experience a lice outbreak, probably because we were stringent about our cleaning processes but eventually we decided the effort we were having to put into it just wasn’t worth it. The girls were too distracted by everything else to even miss the hairstyles!

One lesson we learned early on was that every bit of “special” effort we put into the spa stations (really, every part of the events) was definitely noticed by the girls. At one event we had three separate rooms where the girls would enter for services. While they were receiving pedicures in one room, they were offered a fruity drink (Hawaiian punch!) with a little umbrella in it. In another room, while they waited for their turn to have a little make-up makeover, they could dip marshmallows, pretzels, etc. into chocolate fountains. It wasn’t just about the spa service — it was about the whole spa experience.
Okay, let’s use list format to hit the highlights of how to make this happen at your church or in your living room:
1. Know when to use quality and when to go cheap. It didn’t take us long to find out that buying the cheap chocolate for the chocolate fountains was actually going to cost us more after it almost destroyed our machines. On the flip side, we always bought cheap nail polish since we needed so many (think 60 bottles or more per event — I talked about how we do our manicure stations last year).
2. Always have more drinks than you think you’re going to need. We found that a good rule of thumb is one two-liter of soda per girl attending. That sounds like a lot, but you’ll be surprised at how fast it goes — especially when they’re spilling it everywhere. If you’re planning for a large event, I suggest watching for sales on drinks up to two months before your event. We would watch for two-liters to go to at least $0.89 each before buying — especially since we were buying several hundred at a time!
3. Always have more food than you think you’re going to need. Listen, I don’t care how old they are — growing girls can put food away. We typically served food at different intervals during the night (and morning!). During the spa time, the girls had “tickets” they could use to pick different food items (this was separate from the snacks we offered during some spa events). We usually offered candy bars, nachos, bags of chips, etc. As much as I hated having to see vats of processed nacho cheese, it was the best thing we offered by far simply because we could stretch it as far as we needed. At midnight, we would serve pizza — but more on that later today.
4. Don’t forget about breakfast. We forced the girls to go to bed by 3 a.m. (more on this in the next section of this little blog series, too!), so we knew we needed something good for when they woke up. We handled this differently at each event, sometimes providing breakfast from McDonalds or another fast food restaurant that was willing to cut us a good deal. The most popular thing we ever did, however, was fill white paper lunch bags with an assortment of breakfast items (individually wrapped donuts, piece of fruit, juice box). The bags were decorated with a polka dot label that read “Good morning, princess!” and tied off with ribbon. The girls loved waking up to that!
5. Offer something other than just “girlie” activities. We were very aware that not every pre-teen girl wanted a spa treatment, so we made sure we had other stations set-up, too. Sometimes we had craft stations (they LOVED making their own jewelry!), basketball courts open, etc. We made sure that no girl felt out of place if her nails remained unpainted.
Check back around lunchtime today for part two — The Main Event!
You’re reading Part One of a series about how to plan sleepover events for pre-teen girls. Missed the other posts? Check out Part Two here and Part Three here!