Happy Anniversary mom & dad

44 years ago today, my parents were married! Quite an accomplishment these days! For their 40th anniversary, I decided to throw them a surprise party at our house. My mom HATES surprises. That didn't stop me. It just so happened that my sister and her family were out visiting from Tennessee for their high school reunion. With my brother and sisters help, we were able to pull it off!

As with any good party, I started with the theme. I'm not usually a "red" girl, but the 40th wedding anniversary is the Ruby, so it was a great excuse to go all out on the red color scheme. To keep things easy, we just did a few desserts, champagne toast, cake and coffee. I'm disappointed I didn't have enough time to more pictures! Note to self: have a designated person to take all the detail shots while you are scrambling like crazy!


Here are some of the desserts. I kept it really simple with chocolate covered strawberries and my mom's famous jello recipe in little cups. You can't really tell in the picture, but I labored over those champagne glasses for weeks. Each one has a cluster of red gems for a little flare!

Here is the line up of guests waiting for my parents to come in. On the invitation, I had requested that all the guests incorporate red into their attire. 60 people and all....it was like built in house decorations!

Here they are....my mom a little annoyed and a lot surprised! We had told them we were going out to a great new dessert place, so they didn't suspect anything with a 7:00 arrival time.

This is my niece, Casey outside. I had rented a few belly bars and linens for our deck outside. I did red roses and pomanders of red carnations.

Here is a shot of the deck. I used red lanterns and tissue poms hung over the deck.


Perhaps one of the most fun projects from the party was re-creating their wedding cake. I worked with my favorite ladies at CAKE and got their famous banana truffle cake. I sent them a picture of my parent's wedding cake, and did our best to re-create it. It was actually hard to find the flying doves and the cherubs! I set a picture of them cutting the cake next to their cake. The irony of it was that my mom's wedding colors were red and white, so it went perfectly with the theme!

Here they are after their toast! You can kind of see the cake here.


When my cousin Sara arrived, she was looking at the cake and I saw her studying it a bit. She later told me that she thought I had gone crazy with my taste level. She didn't realize until later that I had re-created their cake! Hilarious. I still laugh when I think what she must have been thinking! After the cake, we surprised them with a video we created in iPhoto of all their pictures through the years. This was a collaborative effort between us kids and me sneaking into my parent's house many, many times over my lunch breaks! We toasted them and took this family picture. Since then, we've added my niece Avery and our two kids to the family.

Next year is their 45th. That is the sapphire anniversary....my wheels are already spinning!

Happy Anniversary mom and dad. I love you!