The Romantic.com

My first husband’s parents were coming up on their 50th wedding anniversary. We HAD to do something special but logistics were such that we lived in Tennessee, they were in North Carolina for the summer and most all their friends were either in Florida or Connecticut and not able to travel easily. We decided to throw them an anniversary party anyway!

We talked his parent’s into coming over to visit us over their anniversary so we could take them out to dinner and booked them a room at a local motel. Then I managed to get names and addresses of people they had been close to over the years. Then I sent everyone an “invitation,” explaining that, while we knew that travel would be difficult, we were planning a “This Is Your Life” style get-together and we wanted them to participate by sending a card, photos, letters or audio tapes detailing special memories, or video taped greetings. As the items came in I organized them so we could present them in somewhat of a chronological order beginning with their wedding. We were thrilled with the response!

We took them out to dinner that night and then back to our apartment. That was where the real surprise was waiting. I had made a miniature wedding cake for dessert and while they were eating that we started the “presentation”.

They were speechless and couldn’t figure out how we had done all this without them catching on. They had a great time and a lot of wonderful memories brought back to mind. And we learned some fun things about them in the process.