A "Golden" 50th Anniversary Celebration

I hope and pray that Isaiah and I will live long

enough to make it to our fiftieth wedding anniversary...

In this day and age, it's almost unheard of for a couple

to stay married for (or live) that long! But there's a special

husband and wife at my church who celebrated this

event last month, and my sister and I had the privilege of
helping them put the party together!

 

Allan and Donna had a pretty good idea of what they

wanted for this party... they had already picked the day

and time, asked that it be a more casual affair, and wanted

the colors to be black, white and gold. So my sister and I took

that information and ran with it!  Now, black and gold aren't
your typical "casual" colors, but we decided if we used
chalkboards throughout the party, it would help create the
informal atmosphere that the Hutchison's were wanting.
 

Here's the invitations... Rebekah designed them - this was the first

time she's ever done something like this, and it looks better than all
the invitations I looked at online! I mean, this looks professional.
 And what's even better is that all the fonts were downloaded for free! 

 

The invitations were sent in handmade envelopes, made from

gold antique-colored scrapbook paper. They were so sweet!

 

We decided pretty early on what we wanted for centerpieces...

Wine bottles that we spray painted with chalkboard paint, and

then Rebekah wrote on them with a chalkboard marker. The flowers

in each bottle were borrowed from a coworker of mine (thanks Jenna!).

The mason jars had a couple pictures of Allan and Donna in

them, and were filled with vegetable oil. And I already had

the gold fabric leftover from a party a few years ago. 

Next, we found this adorable printable for FREE...

how perfect?!? The breakdown of just how many

months, days, hours, and minutes that Allan and Donna

have been married. I loved it!! 

We decided to use the time quantities from the printable above

as decoration on the backs of the chair covers. Rebekah printed

them onto the same scrapbook paper that was used to make

the envelopes for the invitations.

 

These banners are a little difficult to read, but here's what they say: 

loved you then

love you still

always have

always will 

 

 

 Donna requested that there to be gold candy at the reception

to signify their "golden" anniversary... so we baggied up the

candy and put cute little chalkboard sticker tags on them.

 

Our idea for a guestbook came from my cousin's wedding

earlier this year.... a canvas print that everyone signs!

So we arranged with Allan and Donna to take some pictures

on a weekend that Rebekah was coming into town.  The

Hutchison's are so adorable (they don't look like they have

enough years on them to have been married for this long!!!)

and there were so many good pictures to choose from.

Of course, we had a chalkboard with a rhyme that told

people we wanted them to sign the picture...   

 

 

 

 I wish I would have taken a picture of the canvas after

everyone had signed it. I just love that it's something

different than the usual guestbook!

 

Rebekah made an enormous 50, painted gold with a hint

of glitter. And we reused these gold yarn balls from a friend's

wedding that was in 2010... I honestly can't believe they haven't

been thrown away yet! But we needed to add a little something,

and they did the trick. This is Allan and Donna with their

daughter and her boyfriend.

For cups, we used mason jars with gold scrapbook paper

tags tied on with various ribbons. And don't you just love

the striped straws? Found these suckers on sale at Target! 

 

 Allan and Donna happened to get married the day after

President Kennedy was killed. She kept these newpapers

all these years... along with her wedding announcement.

So we displayed these wedding day headlines.

 

Donna had this delicious cake made, and she still had her

original cake topper that was used on the top! I love it!

We displayed a few more pictures from their photo shoot,

and hung some banners that read "50th & Forever".

 This piece of decor at the party came right off Allan and Donna's

wall at their house! But it was just too perfect not to use.

Donna helped us out a little and found gold plates, gold coffee cups,

and black and white napkins with their initial on it while she was on

vacation!!! They were perfect for the party!

 I was a tiny bit overwhelmed because this was a big party

and I didn't have Rebekah with me on the actual weekend

of the party... so I didn't get as many pictures of everything

that I wanted. I missed a whole section that included a

picture of Allan and Donna on their wedding day! I'm so sad.

 

Allan and Donna had about 100 friends and family that were able

to join them to celebrate this big day... there was lots of yummy

food, delicious cake, some funny stories shared, a game to

see how well Allan and Donna know each other after 50 years,

and all in all, it was a joy to share this amazing day with them!

Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Hutchison!