Surprise!! Happy 25th Anniversary!

My mom has been married to my step-dad for 25 years this year. They were planning on renewing their vows in Vegas in front of Elvis (I wish I could've seen that!), but their plans fell through and they ended up not going around the time of their anniversary. Don't get me wrong.. they go to Vegas A LOT! Papa Joe can't seem to get enough of Vegas and begs mom to go as often as they can afford to. So I decided to do something nice for them since they do so much nice things for all of us.... I decided to throw them a surprise anniversary party. It really wasn't that hard since we don't live near each other, so I was able to plan the party without either of them knowing. Naturally, we had to go with the VEGAS theme.. right??

Anyway.. starting from the beginning... Here's the invitation to the party... It was relatively easy to put together. I just used stickers I found at Ben Franklin. Only had to make about 10 invitations, so I could afford to go with the stickers. Decided to use their wedding photo- which was a real challenge because it was stuck to the inside of the frame and apparently it was their only wedding photo- WHAT? I ended up scanning it while still attached to the glass of the frame. Even photoshop couldn't help this photo, so I ended up making it black and white. I guess it worked since we were talking about the past. To give it the Vegas touch, I used gold Stickles to outline the white part. The dies used were Spellbinders Megabilities set.

Here's what it looked like on the inside.

Like all older people... they go to everything EARLY. If you tell them to get there at 12 noon, they'll show up at 11:00am. I knew this was going to be the biggest challenge of the party, so I solicited help from Aunty Arleen. She invited them to lunch for Uncle Larry's Birthday. My only fear was that mom would say "no" which she's been known to do on occasion. We were all relieved when she agreed to go.. Phew! Since Aunty was going to drive them there, we didn't have to worry about them arriving before the rest of us.

We decided to go to the Hawaii Prince Hotel- Prince Court Buffet. Saturdays are the best! Its a Japanese/Hawaiian buffet that includes sushi, tempura, saimin, oxtail soup, shabu shabu and their signature chocolate macadamia nut pie. My DH says its like eating an almond roca pie (except using macadamias instead). Enough about the buffet- just go try it, you won't be disappointed. (Remember to go on Saturdays!)

So Auny Jan helped me with the centerpieces and favors of course. Larry's Bakery (where she works) makes these cool cupcake bouquets! Even the wait staff at the buffet were asking us where we got them since they've never seen it before. Aunty decorated the cupcakes using Vegas themed items. Akemi was in heaven. Aunty also decorated the flower pot and included a die cut frog for good luck.

Not shown here were the cookie favors they made for us using the Las Vegas sign. Sorry- forgot to take photos of the cookies- Hopefully we didn't eat all of them yet so I can get a photo later.

Here's Papa Joe, Grandma Helen and Akemi.

Here's the card we gave to them... I tried to use the same stickers that I used for the invitations.

Inside the card, I used the "slots o fun" sticker and covered the 7 7 7 with hearts.

Here's mom and Joe after the big surprise!

We had a great party. It was so nice to see everyone together to help mom and Joe celebrate their 25th anniversary. It was worth all the work to see the smiles on their faces!