Throwing a Silver 25th Wedding Anniversary Party

I knew my parent's 25th wedding anniversary was coming up. As a recent college grad with just a part time job I figured I had plenty of time to plan a big party. I started planning about two months in advance. It was much more work than I'd intended, but many people stepped up the plate and helped me out.
The first thing we did was set the date. My sister, aunt and I picked a day we knew people would be able to come for a long weekend, if they lived far away. What we didn't plan on, was how many people also had plans to go away that weekend. About half of our 150 invited guests ended up coming. It was a very good thing we made people RSVP.

The invitations were the first thing made. They were simple cardstock pieces of paper that I printed the info onto. As a huge scrapbooker I found silver intertwined heart stickers, silver bows, and shell stamps that I lightly stamped for a background behind the words. The silver bow was above the words, the hearts on the bottom, I varied the invitations, playing around until I found I liked the bow on the top left and hearts on the bottom right. The invitations were simple, inexpensive, and just as nice as the wedding invitations we most likely would have had to buy.

Next, was a trip to the party store. One of the things we found were chocolate molds in the shape of shells. My mom loves the ocean, and since summer was ending we decided a beach theme would be nice. The chocolates ended up around the rim of the cake. In the center of the cake were two beach chair, a fence and some sand.

For the plates we stuck to a solid silver. We got plasticware, which we used for dessert, and the only thing that said 25 were the dessert napkins and confetti. The dinner napkins were white and we rolled the silverware up and tied them with silver ribbon. The party was held in our church basement which already had white plastic tableclothes, which we sprinkled confetti and silver hershey kisses on. There was a decent selection of 25th Wedding Anniversary things at the party store, but nothing we liked a ton.

Going along with the beach theme we found glass fish bowls for centerpieces. We poured white sand filling the bowls about a third of the way full. I painted shells from the beach silver which we arranged around a tea light in the bowl. These centerpieces were probably my favorite decoration.

Since our church basement is not really attractive we decided to dim the lights and use white icicle lights to give a nicer atmosphere. With the white lights, tea lights, shell centerpieces, and confetti on the tables, the room looked quite attractive. A table was also set up with silver picture frames of our my parents and flowers that people kept bringing (even though we said no gifts) ended up that table.

Another table was set up with confetti, a scrapbook, and pieces of scrapbook paper for guests to write messages to my parents. The pieces went in a basket. I later took the photos my sister took and put them together in a scrapbook. This served basically as a guestbook, but in a more creative fun way. I tried to put guests comments next to their photos.

For the food I was lucky that everyone at church wanted to help me. We decided on ziti casseroles, salad, garlic bread, and meatballs. Various people brought things, but my aunt ended up paying for the majority of the food and drinks. My pastor's wife made a nice punch ring with strawberries and sherbet for a punch.

When the guests arrived, they mingled, then ate. My parent's cut the cake, and we had a quiz about my parents that we had everyone do. It was fun. Mostly everyone mingled and enjoyed one another's company. If you get lots of people to help you, have a good eye for decorating, and someone who knows how to cook you can plan an anniversary party on a low budget and still have it come out nicely.