80th birthday celebration

Thank you all for your responses. These are all such lovely ideas and events. I have much food for thought ( boom boom!) to discuss with my father when I next visit as she would love the surprise. We have a few months before her birthday so the weather and Covid situation may have improved by then. It is tempting to do afternoon tea one day and a lunch in a private room next, but we’ll see. She’d love it all, I’m sure- har har. Thanks once again.

Given the current situation, could some of the family simply speak to her on Zoom? We had to do this for my mother’s 100th in lockdown and it worked well. We also had afternoon tea delivered , with half of it going to the family who couldn’t join us. Have you thought of hiring a hall? We held a party in the local golf club - they catered. Because we only had 50 people we were quite spaced out and we had the use of a private garden.

Could you have afternoon tea delivered? Either at her home to save her going out or at your own home, whichever is more convenient. Visitors could do LFTs or simply remain outside. If the birthday is not until spring you could check the long term forecast and hold the party outside with plan B to relocate inside. Dressing up and taking photos is a must.

I celebrated my 80th birthday last summer. I have five adult children and eight g.children, (age range then 7 yrs to 20yrs). The children all live, fortunately, in England, but scattered about. All I wanted was some way of having them altogether.

My two eldest daughters made an arrangement for lunch at a gorgeous pub, not close to any of us - so all had to travel.. Although this was arranged outside, - just in case the weather was bad, it also had a large shed like thing with heater attached to this patio.
Actually, we got one of the hottest days of the year. I had no idea all this had been arranged. Was just collected by local daughter and family to have a lunch with them. Was surprised are how far we travelled, but brilliant surprise when I got there and all of them were assembled. Even my son and his wife who had visited me that weekend, and to whom I had said a farewell to the previous evening, thinking they were going to drive back to their home up north in the morning. Another of my daughters' made a beautiful cake which on one layer had (eatable) pictures of my children and on the lower one eatable pictures of my g.children.
My DiL made a wonderful photo album from the pictures taken there giving me a great keepsake of a super day.

We did two separate events for MIL when she turned 90. This happened early in 2020 before lockdowns.

We held a family dinner in a private room of a restaurant, with about 20 people, and then the next day we did an afternoon 'open house' tea at a hotel. They arranged light food and drink, with about seating for 50. Because it was held from 2pm to 430 pm, we had different visitors drop by and she was able to visit with everyone. We posted an open invite to her church, her seniors group and several old friends and neighbours. She had a fantastic weekend, and was treated like the Queen, although her tiara was plastic and crystals!

I was worried it would tire her out, but she blossomed from the attention and delight of seeing so many old friends. We made a photo booklet for her afterwards which she spent a lot of time going over.

Afternoon tea is a nice idea and a lot of it can be done yourself, with help of course, or book the whole thing at a tea room. My daughter-in-law’s mother was 80 last May and that was what they were planning to do for her but of course it didn’t happen. They went round charity shops and got some lovely china cups and saucers and plates and they found some lovely inexpensive cardboard cake stands and serviettes at B and M. They booked a cricket club pavilion and were planning to make all the cakes, scones, sandwiches etc themselves and were really disappointed when it didn’t happen.

A lovely idea thank you.

See if you can book a private room for tea or lunch close family only. They can LFT before.