I vividly remember the days before my mom and dad’s 25th wedding anniversary. I was just 23 and thought I was supposed to throw them a party. The reason I thought this was because when their friends, the Pasholks, celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary their 5 kids planned it all. At 23, I had no idea how to plan such an event, didn’t know who to talk to to ask for help, so didn’t do anything, except feel guilty about it. In the end, the Pasholks threw them a party and I didn’t attend, out of guilt.
Back then it seemed that people made a big deal about milestone anniversaries. Maybe they still do and we just don’t hang with the right crowd, but I don’t know of any of our friends who has had a party to celebrate.
We’re celebrating quietly tonight — Dean made reservations at Georgia Brown’s, a restaurant I’d not heard of, but sounds wonderful and the kids are joining us for dinner. At first I thought that it should just be Dean and me, but we have many years of going out alone ahead of us, I thought it would be nice if the kids came too.
Note: We had a nice time at Georgia Browns, but were not impressed with the food. It was nice hanging out as a family.
Clutch Cargo Lips 
Dona, Congratulations, even if it’s late.
Your story reminded me of my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary. I felt I should do something, and so my sister and I bought something silver – a cake slice or something like that. And we all went out to dinner.
We celebrated our 25th last year. But it was just the two of us. We’re not “big party” people, but as you know we are travelling people, so we went to Sydney for a long weekend, and a very lovely dinner. Then we decided to milk it, and in Africa a few months later for D’s 50th, we splashed out to mark both milestones and stayed somewhere special (Ulusaba – ), and we got pampered appropriately!
I’m now thinking ahead and wondering how we can top that for our 30th! I know one thing. It won’t be a big party.
(I hope I got the html right!)
(Apologies – my comment is almost longer than your post).
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Instead of this pressure to mark the big milestones (kilometrestones in Canada) maybe we should start practicing random acts of celebration.
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Helen, that’s a great idea. Spontaneity rules! Especially if that means I can have more extravagant trips and dinners and don’t have to wait till a “special occasion.”
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Ah, random acts of celebration. I’m in.
I went to Georgia Brown’s once and really liked it. But that was in the mid-1990s!
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Hey Dona, bet you thought I dropped off the face of the earth!
I guess we were more like the Pasholk kids as we planned and saved for over a year. We had a surprise party for them at a friends and then sent them on a little getaway. Good thing there were lots of us and my oldest brother made us pay according to age. Being one of the younger ones, I only had to put in 2 bucks a week.
My job was to make the anniversary card. It turned out pretty cool. I took their wedding photo and had it enlarged, bought a poster board, folded it in half, glued the picture onto one half, wrote a little verse and had my brothers and sister sign it.
It does seem like our generation is a bit more quiet about milestones, maybe we’re afraid will jinx it.
I was sorry to read about your dad. Hugs.
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Thanks for the comments, everyone —
Otter! How nice to hear from you again. I assumed you were just busy with life!
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Dona, sorry to come to this so late, but happy anniversary! And you’re right, you have many years of going out just the two of you, so enjoy the kids while you can.
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