How to Throw a Les Miserables Birthday Party

Prepare invitations. For your Les Mis party, your invitations should look old fashioned (maybe written on aged parchment paper in a fancy font) and should quote some of the songs. Here's and example:

• Do you hear the people sing the birthday song? The time is near! Eponine Thenardier is turning twelve! Come meet at the ABC Cafe (Eponine's house, 1234 Thenardier Lane) on October 2nd, 1815 to celebrate! Bring your best singing voices, Les Miserables (French Revolution [more specifically, June Rebellion] era) costumes, and a loaf of bread :). Don’t steal it though!

Decorate. Obviously, you've got to build a barricade. You could go all the way out and build a ginormous one in your back yard with old junk (you could even ask your guests to bring old junk that they have, and then you guys could assemble it to "The Building of the Barricade" at the party) or pile up bits of furniture in the corners at home. Or, you could make each room of your a house a different Les Mis setting. Have your kitchen be the ABC cafe, and your living room be Thenardier's inn, and your garden be the streets of Paris.

• Try to avoid balloons, streamers, or any typical party stuff, but if you absolutely need a birthday banner, then try having it be a neutral color with the Les Mis font on it.

Get some themed food. This is a fun one. Get some miniature sausages or hotdogs and stick toothpicks into them. Put papers on the toothpicks labeling them "Kidney of a horse" and "Liver of a cat" Other food ideas: sparkling cider or apple juice in fancy bottles ("Grantaire, put the bottle down!"), Loaves of freshly baked bread (“You stole a loaf of bread!”), and various French foods.

Don't forget the cake. There are many ways you could go with a Les Mis cake. You could A.) Have it look like cakes did in that era B.) Frost some kind of Les Mis design on it (barricade, etc) or C.) Use some kind of other French dessert instead of a cake. Whichever you choose, it should be easy to do at home or get as a special order in a cake shop.

Welcome the guests. Okay, you're all ready for your party, decked up in your best Eponine costume, and the guests begin to arrive. Make sure that your guests know that they must come dressed up to the party and that there will be no talking, only singing (and some yelling when the battles come). If they break this rule, send them to Javert!

• Have someone dress up as Javert and tie them to a tree for five minutes or so. Have a younger sibling dress up as Gavroche and have them annoy Javert. Play a Les Mis soundtrack throughout the party, but don't watch the movie adaptation from 2011- some guests may not consider it appropriate (even if you fast forward through Lovely Ladies). The 10th Anniversary Concert from 1998 is less visually explicit, so playing it could be a safer decision.