We celebrated my parents' 50th anniversary party last July. I was in charge of decorations and desserts. Monica and her girls flew in from Moscow a couple weeks before the party and were in charge of the main food. Monica is a fabulous cook, so there was no question that the food would be outstanding. She's also very organized and great at doing parties. My new friend Wendy (from my parents' church) volunteered to help me with the desserts and the cake, and she walked me through the steps of creating an imitation of their original cake. It wouldn't have been half as good without her help. Since my parents were married in Canada, the original cake was fruitcake. I chose to make the top fruitcake and the bottom layers Styrofoam for a couple of reasons. First of all, most American think they don't like fruitcake. Secondly, I didn't see how a cake cutting ceremony would fit into an open house format. Stephen made the roses for the cake in June before he left for India. Then I frosted and decorated the cake a week or so before the party, and Wendy transported it and put it together.
If you are interested in more details about the party, this link is to the questionnaire we created about my parents (I'm sure we had more fun creating this than the guests did answering it), and this link is to my parents' childhood stories (my mom grew up on a prairie farm during the dustbowl years; my dad grew up in England.) I turned the stories and emails from their friends into a huge scrapbook, a project that mushroomed far beyond my initial vision.
It was a lot of work, but my parents are worth every minute of it and more.
