They say fame has a price and while that observation is usually intended to reflect the personal sacrifices a celebrity makes to be famous, it takes on a different meaning when it comes to celebrity birthday parties.

Let's say you wanted to throw Lindsay Lohan a birthday party, the price of fame is a cool $1 million. That's the price tag for Vegas nightclubs interested in hosting her next birthday party. To be fair, it is her 21st birthday so she can legally drink and given her off-screen , out-of-studio mishaps, there is a direct correlation between the public's fascination with her alcohol intake and the seven-figure asking price. I assume, unlike Paris Hilton who loves to sing in public, the $1 million doesn't include any songs off of her albums.

Did PURE win the LiLo birthday sweepstakes? Seen here with Cindy Crawford last week at AURA, PURE's sister new luxury club in the Bahamas, Lindsay was shopping her party around as far back as December with a starting bid of $250,000. Even though Lindsay told Ellen that she was going to milk this party for all it's worth because it's a milestone, club execs have gone on record saying they wouldn't pay $1-million, but I've spotted PURE ad banners (see extract below) popping up around Vegas sites proclaiming "the biggest birthday bash of the decade." The party will certainly attract media crews from all over the world and kick off 4th of July festivities here in Vegas and bring an endless supply of publicity for PURE. So wharver the cost, it is money well spent.

STARS GET PAID TO PLAY?
"Wait a second," you may interrupt. "Stars get paid to celebrate their birthday on top of regular presents?" The answer is yes and in Vegas, it's a significant amount of cash. Just as stars walk out of awards shows and galas with hefty goodie bags that hold enough loot to finance a professionally made YouTube video, so to do they get paid to attend their own birthday party. And the benefits package usually includes a private jet, a limo with free suites, food and drink.


Where for your birthday you or your friends might pay for your trip to Vegas, a limo, cover at a nightclub and drop $2000 on bottle service, a celebrity will get it all for free in most cases and even take home a paycheck. Of course the right celeb's name on a marquee will bring in hundreds, if not thousands of people wanting to party with the star so the investment is worth it. I suspect, your name on the marquee, will not have the same effect on the club's bottom line which is why the star gets paid to play and you do not.

SHE'S IN PARTIES
A popular celebrity birthday girl in Vegas is Paris Hilton. She reportedly earned a six-figure salary to celebrate her 25th birthday at PURE last year and just before her birthday party this year at Body English inside the Hard Rock, she got a cool $1 million to attend a party in Austria. Her party at Body English was smack dab in the middle of NBA All-Star Weekend and to fans that braved the crowds and traffic jams, they were treated to an impromptu performance from Ludacris while Paris danced jumped on stage.

Stars don't have to celebrate a birthday to get paid for showing up at a party. The figure for Britney Spears' now-classic fainting performance at PURE on New Year's Eve was $240,000. To count down from 10 to one and wish the crowd a Happy New Year, she was paid $16,000 a syllable. Of course that was the beginning of the downward spiral that left her wigged out and eventually in wigs. But, spending the first few seconds of 2007 in the same room as Brit was a treat for fans.


IT'S ALL RELATIVE
Star parties have become such the norm here that B-Listers (and in a one or two cases, no listers) are walking their own red carpets to the bank. The paydays may be considerably lower than one of the "big three" (LiLo, Brit or Paris), but the perks and party favors are the same from the fancy cakes by Jean-Philippe to the big, glossy ads in Las Vegas Weekly. And that's one of the great equalizing qualities of Vegas.

Even Kevin Federline, who, barring a sex tape or taking over for Rosie on 'The View,' is on the waning end of his 15 minutes, gets the package. The actual paycheck for his PURE party was rumored to be in the lowest five-digit range, but the perks could easily double the compensation. He unfortunately celebrated his birthday the same night as Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Club so it was hard to play 'Spot-the-Celebrity' as most of the stars were at Hef's. He had planned a second party in Los Angeles, but canceled it after the major magazines balked at the $25,000 price for exclusive media rights.

Regardless of the price of the party, the best thing about these celebrity birthday soirees is that they allow the fans to get into cell phone camera range of their favorite celebrities which is a unique proposition for most of America where a birthday perk is a free meal at a diner and maybe a discounted beer at the local pub.