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| Mirza Clan 2013, 2 parents 5 daughters 4 son in laws and 10 grand kids. Mash' Allah |
My sisters and I threw our parents a surprise 35th
anniversary party earlier this month. The thing with surprises in our family is
that all five of us sisters majorly suck at them! We are very close to our mom
and speak with her almost daily, which made hiding the whole planning/prep of
this party a huge task. We also rely on her immensely to advise us whenever we’re
doing a big event, so the lack of her guidance was definitely felt. “How many
paper cups do we need? Are two trays of biryani plenty? Should we buy back up
naan in case the caterers don’t provide enough? Where is soda on sale?” These are
all questions Mama Mirza would have a simple answer to. So, we struggled
without her a bit, but in the end we pulled it off and they were both surprised
and very proud. Goal Accomplished.
Planning an anniversary party for your parents:
Set a budget and begin brainstorming early
It makes it easy to know what you can and cannot
do if you know how much you plan to spend. We had a decent size budget since
all 5 of us were pitching in, but still we began planning for the party about 6
months beforehand, simply because four of us are working moms and living in
different states so it was a lot of late night group IChat’s where we’d hash
out details. Once we were all on the same page about how much each person can
contribute we were able to figure out quickly how the costs would be divided
up.
Book the hall
The most important task to get out of the way for
a big event is to set a date and book the hall. We shopped around in our area
for nice places. We spoke with fancy banquet halls and also local VFW halls. In
the end we decided it was best for our budget to stick with a local VFW hall
where we could spend more on décor, cake, food, and entertainment. Make sure to
start calling places at least a month in advance, especially if your event is
around a holiday because most halls, especially nice ones, are booked up
quickly.
Book the Caterer
Again this was tough without mom since she’s
always the one to know which caterer makes the best nihari and which now
charges too high a rate. It took a few phone calls, but we got a good deal at
Nawab Grill and ended up having a great amount of food that our guests really
loved too.
Our menu was: Chicken Biryani, beef Nihari, Baghare
Bangan, Chicken 65, Naan, Salad, Raita, Ras Malai all for $750 which was more
than plenty to feed 100 guests.
Invite your guests
I’ve used Paperless Post in the past for my son’s
birthday party. Read here how I feel about the website. I really love their
designs and again, we found one that was elegant yet simple and it went nicely with our theme!
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| There was supposed to be another tier of pom poms at the top, I got lazy. |
Party Décor
This is where your budget can go out of hand since
it’s all about how extravagant or simplistic you want to be. Nothing a few trips
to the dollar store, amazing savings and Costco along with a creative mind can’t solve though. My little
sister was in charge of this area for our party and she did a wonderful job. We
had an elegant theme of Grey & Coral Pink for the party. We made the
centerpieces at home along with the banner found via free download here. Mariam created these great programs to place at each table with a love quote on the cover. I loved the Mr. & Mrs. sign for their chairs but we just didn't have time to put together the ribbon, so we stuck it on the door where they entered from and it ended up being a cute addition!
Order the Cake
This was my first time working with Piece of Cake by Saba Mendha. She did
a great job bringing my ideas to life. I wanted a simple white cake with a thin
grey ribbon on each tier and a big coral colored flower on top with some stylish
yet simple piping work one each tier. She did just that. We had one layer vanilla with fresh strawberries and another with chocolate cake with chocolate ganache. Both cakes tasted great! My only
critique would be that I imagined the flower being larger than it turned out,
since it was the only ‘pop’ part of the cake I wish it was a bit bigger. Also,
the piping work wasn’t totally clean, but I understand that she’s still a new cake artist and it wasn’t
a big deal to me. Taste and look overall were great. She was on time with
delivery and very open to my ideas for the cake design. I loved her professionalism and great taste of the cake!
Write a Speech
This was tough because I’m a sap. Also, I never
have a spare moment to collect my thoughts. I would start thinking of things on
my drives to work but usually I’d be a mess of tears by the time I got to my
desk. So it took some time, and some Googling of wedding speeches, which I
found were all quite useless. So here, use mine and put your own creative
liberties on it, I’m glad to help since Google, for once, was inept:
Sab se
pehle mein kehna chahoungi ke aap saab humare ammi aur abu ke aziz dost aur
rishtedaron mein se hain, aur humme bahaut khushi hai ke aap unki zindagi ke
iss ehem din ko celebrate karne mein humare saath shamil hosake. Humari dua hai
ke Allah tala ammi abu ko 35 aur khushiyon bhaare saal ata farmein.
“Firstly, I would like to say thank you to all our
guests. You all are mom and dad’s most dear friends and relatives and we are
very happy that you are able to join us in celebrating this special day in
their lives where we honor their marriage. We wish that God grants our mom and
dad with 35 more years filled with happiness.”
Abu and Ammi, your marriage has always been an excellent
example for us five, in every aspect of life. Every child thinks their parents
are the best, but the real truth, sorry to tell the rest of you, is that my
parents truly are the best. You two have taught us many lessons through our
lives. But the most important one you taught us is that it is your ikhlaq, manner, generosity, your ability
to be a good friend and a helpful neighbor that makes one a better person. And
you both have shown us that a big part of being a better person means to be an
ideal spouse. A spouse who shows respect in public and in private, who cares
for not just one another but for each other’s families. Seeing the amount of
patience you both have had in the past 35 years with all the situations that
life put you through is what inspires me when I know I’m losing my patience!
Mom, to us you are the ideal woman. We call you a Spartan
because you are a warrior. You are the ideal standard by which we measure all
our life goals. I cannot imagine the difficulties you went through coming into
this new country without your family and very few familiar faces. But you did a
great job at everything that came your way. you raised 5 children, worked full
time, had numerous house guests and random visitors popping over all the time
and never once did I see you struggle. I only saw you open your doors and your
heart to others, you always told us that Allah puts barqat (blessing) in a home
that has its door open for loved ones and that no situation is difficult if you
keep in mind the blessing that come with it.
Dad, you are our hero. It’s true that every girl’s first
love is their father and I can speak for all five of us when I say you are
definitely ours. You have an unending amount of patience and love to offer us.
You have taught us what it means to be an excellent son, father and husband.
I have learned from seeing you both that no human and no
marriage is perfect, only Allah is perfect. But Allah (SWT) gives us a spouse
to complete us so that their strengths make up for our shortcomings, and
together we are whole. We pray to always see you two being whole together with
a long and healthy life iA.
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| we gift wrapped as shoebox and had paper/pens for guests to write down memories for our parents to read later on as a keepsake from the party. |
Prepare a Slideshow
Everyone loves looking at old pictures of
themselves in the '70s with crazy hairdos and stylish bell bottoms. Just
don't go crazy, remember that people can just browse at a lot of these
pics on a Facebook album too so keep it short sweet and add some sappy
songs to pile on the nostalgia. |
| My happy child in front of the Slideshow area |
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| Cake cutting |
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