50th Wedding Anniversary Party!

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Last week, my in-laws celebrated 50 years of marriage. We can all only hope to be so lucky to reach such an amazing relationship milestone! I received an email from some out of town relatives asking if we were planning anything. At that point, I was thinking a small dinner, but after discussing it with the family, it went from a small dinner to quickly escalating into "Let's throw a surprise party!" I've hosted many shindigs over the past 20 years, but can say this was my first time throwing a surprise party. I was super stressed hoping to keep everything under wraps, but with a lot of help from my niece, we were able to get everything pulled together quickly and successfully. Thank God for unlimited texts, because I swear I sent out a million of them over the past two weeks. I let my niece handle most of the decorations so I could focus on the menu. We went low key, having the main course catered in so I didn't have to spend all day in front of a grill or stove. So, with a bit of free time, I whipped up a few desserts. With our color theme of gold, I baked my in-laws favorite sugar cookie recipe using numbered cookie cutters for 50.

To give them a golden hue, I sprayed them with Wilton Gold Color Mist. These cookies were a huge hit!

Since my mother-in-law has a strong love for peanut butter desserts, I used my Wilton Shot Glass Mold to make these peanut butter dessert shooters (a simple peanut butter mousse in a chocolate cup).

I filled the heart, 5 and 0 in my Numbers /Symbols Mold with white chocolate, then once the chocolate dried, I dusted it with Pharaoh's Gold Luster Dust. Tip: Dust the pieces prior to sticking them onto the cups unless you want a sparkly mess on your cups, like I got on mine.

To keep with the gold theme, I thought it would be fun to have candy dishes filled with gold candies. I took it a step further and bought some jars from the $1 store, then used Glass Etching Cream to spruce them up for the occasion.

My niece cut out photos of the happy couple and put them in a collage in the shape of 50.

She also decorated these mini wine bottles with cute labels she bought from Vista Print.

And, she made them a keepsake print that she had the family sign.

Instead of doing what the rest of us did and stuff money in a card, she thought outside the box and framed them 50 gold $1 coins. The only thing I would have done differently would have been to stick them to the frame with some double sided tape for a cleaner look, but she still did a good job with it.

We created a photo booth area. What party is complete without a photo booth and silly props?

The anniversary cake was topped with gold number candles that I found at Party City for $2 each.

Overall, the party was a hit and I was happy we were able to bring all of the family together for this very special occasion ♥

shop the products we used for our party below: