As you know, I LOVE planning and decorating events. When our parents' 40th anniversary was coming up, we made sure we could get both sets in the same city at the same time in order to throw them a joint party. Not as easy as it sounds with my parents living in Malaysia and Nik's in London but given the awesome coincidence of them having married on the exact same day all those years ago, we made sure we planned it nice and early and last Sunday, we had a wonderful day of celebrations all together.
We opted for London as we thought it would be the easiest place for our relative to get to rather than somewhere near us in Sussex. Lots of Nik's family are in London anyway but my family up north would find it much easier to either fly there or get the train. I wanted somewhere near the in-laws place to make it easier for me to get there to make arrangements etc. and it also meant we could invite everyone back after for cake and bubbly. I recruited Gemma as my local London expert (she lives near my in-laws) and she gave me a great list of potential venues.
In the end we plumped for Bianco 43, a beautiful bright looking Italian restaurant, it's all white washed so the perfect blank canvas. They were very helpful planning with me over email about menus and what exactly we needed for the event. Not only that but they let me turn up early, two hours before they were open on the day to set up and let us take advantage of their birthday party offer of a free glass of fizz for all our guests! I went to visit the venue the evening before the party and was delighted to see where they planned to have us, with two long tables below the mezzanine which meant I could hang my banner, garland and photos!
Of course the first thing I do when planning anything is to make a Pinterest board, imagine if I'd had Pinterest when I was getting married! I had to keep this one secret as Mum's on Pinterest but here are a few of the flower inspiration images I saved:
I wanted to have clusters of little vases along the centre of the tables, filled with ruby colours, lots of greenery and a few white touches. I had hoped to get some deep red Peonies, Dahlias and Ranunculus among other things. I thought these were all in season in the summer and made plans to head to the famous Columbia Road flower market before the event as the anniversary was on a Sunday. I headed off bright and early to arrive when it opened at 8am and found some free parking nearby. Luckily it was still pretty quiet so I had a lovely time wandering up and down exploring what was on offer.
Sadly it turns out that Peonies had just finished and Dahlias were just starting so no-one had any of either. There was actually a lack of red in general, other than roses. Luckily I found some of my favourites, Celosia in the deep ruby colour (they also come in orange and green, I actually had green ones in my wedding bouquet) as well as some gorgeous fluffy dark pink Astilbe and another pink one with teenie flowers on each stem which I don't remember the name of (
update: I saw these in a florist today and asked, they're called Veronicas). I had already bought some gorgeous dark red roses from a supermarket too. As there weren't as many large red blooms as I hoped, I did buy a few more white than I planned, some of my other favourites - Freesias and Lisianthus with a little bit of baby's breath and some greenery and again some others like the pink ones with lots of little flowers which I can't remember the name of. I wanted to make sure I had enough and spent £50 plus the roses.
Off I went with my armful of flowers (and a bag full of a few extra vases I did some great haggling for in a junk shop) and Nik came with me to the venue to get everything set up. Most of the vases were also from our wedding, I'd collected a few cut glass bud vases from various charity shops and had a few little jars left over from our jam wedding favours. I also managed to sneak a couple of small vases out of MIL's house that morning too!
In addition to the flowers, I had made a pom pom garland, a photo banner and had painted a 40 and RUBY letters to add to the decor as well as a little lovely company letter banner to spell out Happy 40th Anniversary. I made some tissue paper poms to hang back at the house as well and had some framed wedding pictures of both sets of parents (the same frames I used to display them at our own wedding). I have to say, I am really pleased with how everything looked in the end, especially the flowers! (I often picture ideas in my head but have trouble executing them to the same perfectionist standard I stupidly set myself but I was SO happy with how the floral arrangements turned out, exactly as I wanted!)
As you can imagine, I delegated childcare to Granny & Grampy while I painted and glittered little hearts, cut ribbons, fluffed tissue paper and trotted off to the flower market. The twins got some special extra time with their grandparents while I got to enjoy secretive crafting in the garage!
I'll share the actual event photos soon and show you how we re-arranged all the decor back at the house with the cake (and recipe)!
