Recently, we celebrated a 25th wedding anniversary in style. Although it had to be during a global pandemic, we made it work. I must say… as I get older, I really appreciate my parents more and more for their love.
Love
As I continue to mature and endure hardships, I realize the trials and tribulations that couples can go through. I hear of certain friends having to experience their parents divorce and it can take a toll on life. With that being said, my parents celebrated their 25 wedding anniversary on Wednesday, Aug 26th. Because they have done so much for me, I wanted to organize something wonderful. I am very grateful for their devotion. What a milestone this is! Maybe your family is also planning on celebrating a 25th wedding anniversary soon? Or a similar milestone? I’m here with some ideas!
While doing some research leading up to the event, I found out that the theme for 25 years is silver. This is going to sound cheesy, but I have learned from my parents that it is important to appreciate family, time, good food and moments more so than material items. Because of this lesson, I ended up focusing on creating an overall memorable get-together for them, instead of buying them their own material items. I ended up throwing them a little celebration that included them, myself, and my Godparents. The celebration was indoors because the weather was too windy. It consisted of balloons, fun desserts and glam. Below is a list of what made the evening special:
A Video of Their Friends and Family
Because of the pandemic, I could not ask many people to physically attend. Nonetheless, I got the idea from a friend to create a special video for my parents. I messaged all of our close friends and family members asking them to take a short clip of them wishing my parents a happy anniversary. I let them know that it could easily be created with their phone. Some of them were very creative and made their wishes funny. They used props like suits and included glasses of wine. I simply used iMovie to edit all of the clips and put them together. The video made my parents feel as though everyone was in the room with us. It made my mom cry happy tears. This is a sentimental yet fun video that they will keep forever!
A Customized Dessert Box
In the picture above, is a dessert box from a company that is popular on Instagram. The company is called DippedOttawa. I ordered chocolate covered strawberries and Oreos specifically. From my knowledge, they also do dipped pretzels. I customized the box in such a way that the strawberries and Oreos were simple in colour and read “Happy 25th Anniversary”. Keeping up with the silver theme, I asked for silver pearls to be added to the strawberries. The Oreos had both a sweet and salty taste to them, which was delicious. The strawberries were light and fresh.
I understand that buffet-style food is not ideal during the pandemic. For this, I would suggest that if you have 4-5 guests and you are sharing the dessert box, to consider that everyone first wash their hands, that everyone takes their own portions one at a time using their own clean utensils and finally, that they cannot go back for more.
Customized Candles
We already have a couple of picture frames around the house. I normally don’t like decor pieces that are customized. Instead, I prefer them to be generic and modern so that they are timeless. I was okay with customized candles solely so that we could light them and then throw them away. My parents ended up loving the romantic feel. You can order the candles online from Personalization Mall.
Cake
Of course, every celebration needs a cake. The cake that we had was lovely. I bought it from Three Tarts, located in Ottawa. This is my favourite bakery. They have amazing fruit tarts, cakes and banana bread. The cake that I ordered for the anniversary celebration was a lemon poppyseed cake with cream cheese frosting. The poppyseed really shined through, while the frosting added a nice creamy texture. Our guests loved the cake and so did my parents and I. The silver cake topper you see in the photo is from Party Mart. Overall, the cake looked elegant and (almost) too lovely to eat.
If you have made it this far, I hope that you enjoyed reading about how we celebrated a 25th wedding anniversary in style, despite the pandemic. For more on events, make sure to keep an eye out for Rachel’s post about how to make parties pretty.
