26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Sunday World
Why Bed by 10pm is the hottest new trend on the social scene
'Customers of that age group can feel confident going out that they won't be surrounded by young people.'
Belfast is getting its first Bed by 10pm event next month with a strictly over-30s clientele.
The brand has taken hold across the world with partygoers who used to dance the night away now dancing away the early evening and getting home in time for the news.
And the Tipsy Bird summer party may be the first opportunity in years for anyone over the age of 30 to be ID'd says event co-ordinator for Like It Love It Louis Williamson.
'With the state of the world at the moment people need somewhere to escape, and there are not a lot of places where people of a certain age group can feel they're not the oldest person in the room,' he says.
Bed by 10pm launches in Belfast this summer
'Customers of that age group can feel confident going out that they won't be surrounded by young people.'
The Bed by 10pm brand, launched last August, is part of the Like It Love It party group which hires venues and provides entertainment. Its slogan for the over-30s parties is 'because adults have stuff to do tomorrow'.
Last year saw an explosion in entertainment aimed at ravers who aren't ready to hang up their glow sticks.
Line of Duty star Vicky McClure had previously probed the power of music in TV documentary Our Dementia Choir when her husband, filmmaker Jonny Owen suggested daytime raves for a 30-plus audience.
Their Day Fever events have now toured the UK and are currently on the road again.
Vicky McClure
"We've had some really memorable pivotal moments, we have had wedding proposals, we've had people facing really tough times, like a woman in Dublin facing a brain tumour and she wanted to immerse herself and forget what she was going through for a bit,' says Vicky.
Dublin nightclub SoHo started hosting over-35s Saturday afternoons last August, which finish at 10pm, and have been a huge success.
In Belfast an over-35s rave in Custom House Square last summer sold out in less than an hour.
The Bed by 10pm brand is launching in Northern Ireland with a 1pm to 5pm summer party spin-off at the venue in Ann Street in Belfast on May 17, and Louis promises there will be more to come. Usually the parties start at 4pm and run until 9pm, promising patrons can be at home and tucked up in bed by ten.
Bed by 10pm is coming to Belfast
'This event in Belfast is a spin-off with a rooftop vibe for a summer audience to catch the sun,' says Louis.
'Our plan is to bring a longer Bed by 10pm event to Belfast.'
The daytime party for the over-30s has been one of the biggest successes for the international events company.
'Our first run of events launched in Australia back in August. We're now operating in the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, we've just launched in America and we're looking at South Africa,' he says.
'The feedback has been great. Everyone loves it and the sales speak for themselves.
'We'll be back with a lot more dates and we constantly have people from cities we haven't been to asking us to come.
'The growth has been crazy and in less than a year we are operating globally.
'We're also launching a spin-off Bed by 10pm Festival, and the first event will be held this year in London.'
While there is a minimum age he assures party fans there is no maximum age.
One reveller in Australia got in touch to ask if having a bus pass made her past it.
'We had a message from a lady in her late seventies asking if she was too old.
'Anyone is welcome above the age of 30,' he says.
And the coordinator says you're never too young to feel old.
'As someone who is not 30 yet I get it myself. I'll go into a club and feel like an old man, and I'm not,' he says.
