celebrating 60 years

This May marked the 60th wedding anniversary of my Mother's parents. So how best to celebrate? With a party of course! Well really part family reunion, part wedding reception. My grandparents eloped (along with another couple) so they never had the full wedding reception experience. My mom and her siblings thought it was high time they did!

Our inspiration for the theme, decorations and venue was my grandparent’s love of swing dancing & Big Band music. We rented a room from Strictly Ballroom and chose a simple but elegant color scheme of black & red (inspired by their kitchen decor), using gingham checked fabrics (a favorite fabric) and roses (another favorite) for texture.

For the "dining area" we used a set for screens decorated with fabric, photos and records to create a back drop for the head table and set up the tables in a horse-shoe pattern.

The tables were set with large records scoured from Goodwill as chargers, clear plastic plates (so the records would show through), silver plastic silverware, red roses in small arrangements and votive vases, small records, tea light candles in red glass votives and music & heart confetti.

We created a "scrapbook" area with collage frames fill with pics of my grandparents, both before and after they met. The area also had a bookshelf full of photo albums and a slideshow of favorite photos playing.

We also hung photos mounted on records on the glass wall in the middle of the room to tie the two spaces together.

Our meal and dessert bar was catered by Normandie Catering (we were very impressed - yummy food and very nice to work with!). The chocolate cake with chocolate mousse filling covered in buttercream icing was by Malia Kennedy. So yummy and she did a great job creating the look we wanted (simple and textured like dotted Swiss, another fabric favorite of my grandmother).

We really surprised my grandparents by inviting the couple that they eloped with to help them celebrate. Both couples got to celebrate with the wedding cake, bouquets and boutonnières (made by me), a "first" dance to my Grandparents song (Moonlight Serenade) and the services of Valorie Mundie who photographed the event for us.

The event went very smoothly, except for the guests of honor being late so we had ran out of time for our complimentary swing dance lesson. Oh well! My grandparents were really overwhelmed at first but in the best possible way. It was a small guest list but all of their children and most of their grandchildren were there (including the ones living in CA). There were also speeches, toasts, lots of dancing, laughter, reminiscing and such like. It was all about the family time, which is so important to them.

I was so grateful for my friend Jen and her husband who agreed to be slave labor a server for the day and for everyone who helped set up and clean up - whew!