Wade Vandervort
Hailyn Calderon is offered the hands’ of her chambelanes during her quinceañara celebration, Saturday, July 2, 2016.
Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016 | 2 a.m.
A centuries-old celebration of a Latina girl’s rite of passage into womanhood has long made its mark in the Las Vegas Valley’s Hispanic community.
Quinceañera, the extravagant ritual of the 15th birthday, is perhaps the most significant day in a young Latina’s life besides her wedding, according to local celebrants. And the over-the-top trappings are driving big business.
At least 50 stores and 35 banquet halls (with more to come) in Las Vegas are either completely dedicated to, or sell the majority of their products in the service of, making these girls feel like princesses.
One such store, Casa de Calderon, sells custom gowns that can take three months to make. Pricing them at $900 to $3,000 depending on size, colors and carefully stitched jewels, store owner Pablo Calderon believes quinceañera dresses should be individualized because “no two girls are the same.”
“It’s a special event, so she should have a special gown,” Calderon said.
At Boulevard mall, fashion designer Enrique Montes sells the garments for $600 to $4,000 out of his Dreams 15 Boutique. A native of Juarez, Mexico, Montes said he sends about 100 gowns out the door every year. And he adds that most of his clients will pay “whatever it takes,” to make a quinceañera memorable.
“They don’t care how much money they spend,” Montes said. “These girls want everything big.”
Fabrizio Banquet Hall in downtown Las Vegas is one of more than two dozen large-scale, non-casino banquet halls in the valley to host parties for the popular Latin American milestone. Opened in 2012, Fabrizio hosts “at least two or three” quinceañeras each month, accounting for about a quarter of its business, which also includes receptions for weddings, proms and religious celebrations like baptisms, co-owner Irma Loera said.
Fabrizio offers different packages, some of which include catering, decorations and live music, and others that allow families to provide their own food and entertainment. Independent banquet-hall rentals can cost $4,000 to $15,000 for 200 to 300 guests during a typical six-hour block, Loera said. In most cases, when the dancing continues into the midnight hours quinceañera celebrants can book additional hours at banquet halls on the spot, for an extra $250 to $1,000 per hour.
One such Fabrizio client was Yesenia Delgado, whose oldest daughter, Hailyn Calderon, a sophomore at Legacy High School, recently celebrated her 15th birthday under dimmed lights and glass chandeliers with family and friends dancing to both traditional and contemporary Mexican music.
Calderon’s coming-of-age party started with Roman Catholic Mass on Saturday morning. That evening, wearing a massive blue ball gown with purple flowers that her family said cost $3,000, Calderon, along with eight chambelanes (male companions) and seven damas (female companions), performed a grand entrance and a series of choreographed dances the group had been practicing for two months.
Costs for Calderon’s quinceañera celebration, including the dress, dance lessons for her and her entourage of 15, a live Mexican “banda” group with violins, guitars and trumpets, a DJ, catering for 120 attendees, customized napkins and tablecloths, a four-tiered specialty cake and an open bar for adults, ran about $25,000, Delgado said. The family had been planning the event for over seven months.
Fabrizio co-owner Loera said some clients had spent up to $35,000 for the landmark celebration, and planned for over a year. That dollar amount is more than many people spend on their weddings.
“I would say it’s equally as important,” Delgado said of her daughter’s quinceañera.
Representatives from casinos, who also advertise their banquet halls for quinceañeras, said business had suffered in recent years as independent banquet halls took over the industry. One of the valley’s most popular casino-based quinceañera banquet halls, Circus Circus now hosts only five of those celebrations annually compared with as many as 15-20 in years past, said Wilmer Flores, the casino’s assistant manager of banquet services.
With starting rental prices north of $6,000 for groups of 200 to 300, and packages that already include hotel-based catering, casinos have all but lost their quinceañera business to private halls, which can offer lower rates and allow clients to have a more customized experience, Flores said.
“It’s gotten hard for us to compete with some of the lower prices,” he said.
Other popular casinos for quinceañeras include the Cannery, Sam’s Town, Boulder Station, Texas Station, Santa Fe Station, Sunset Station and Suncoast.
The pervasiveness of quinceañera culture has also given rise to a valley-wide print publication. Since opening its doors in 2013, Las Vegas-based Princess Party Magazine has helped connect a growing number of dress designers, banquet halls and dance-instruction companies with customers, said the magazine’s director, Isela Quintana.
Business in the quinceañera industry is booming “as much as ever” in Las Vegas, Quintana said. And she doesn’t expect that to change anytime soon.
“It’s very consistent,” Quintana said. “Pretty much every weekend, all of the halls are busy.”
