50th wedding anniversary-(help)

willow

Sun, Jun 03 2007, 2:51 pm

It is my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary. I am not really involved in the planning because I am so far away and there isn't much I can do from this distance.
But from talking with my mother and sister in-law I can tell they are panicking. I told my mother I would post on here for ideas and I assured her that you ladies would have some fantastic solutions.
Here are the details.
1- There is not much money to go around and not many people to contribute time and effort.
2-My grandparents are quite amazing and unique and they are flying everyone in. However it is really up to the family to do something special.
3- My grandparents are so so special they have supported us monetarily, emotionally, and have been extremely close to everyone in the family. We are not a big family and there seems no way that we can adequately express our thanx and gratitude for who they are. We want this to be extra special and so far the only thing we are doing is creating a video using pictures from our family.

greenfire

Sun, Jun 03 2007, 3:19 pm

bring a sign in book, make t-shirts with a photo of them, create a nice dinner depicting a romatic little wedding ...

Make a family TREE!!!

Last edited by greenfire on Sun, Jun 03 2007, 3:20 pm; edited 1 time in total

hila

Sun, Jun 03 2007, 3:19 pm

Well they probably do not want presents - since I am sure they have accumulated plenty of gashmiut over teh years.

We just had my mohters 80th birthsay party. We asked people not to give gifts, but to give adonation to tsedaka in honour of her birthday. She actually named 2 tsedakas that she wanted, but in the end people gave where they wanted and send cards telling her where the money had been given.

Thisway the givers can actually give more - since they can use maaser money and she does not get lots of useless presents to dust.

We actually printed a picture of teh granchildren on canvas (any good photostore can do it) that we took at pesach.

She really liked that.

Hope these ideas helped.

shoy18

Sun, Jun 03 2007, 7:15 pm

Get the entire family together the day before or the day of and go get a portrait of the whole family, or if you can manage or know someone in the business have them come to the party and take family pictures.

ganizzy

Sun, Jun 03 2007, 10:27 pm

some ideas ive seen:
-a scrapbook with pics of the kids and grandkids with letters they wrote.
-a big frame or something that you put on the wall. in the middle is the wedding picture of the grandparents and all around are the wedding pictures of the kids
- a video of freinds and family saying their good wishes to teh grandparents
- ive seen this with parents birthdays and the present from little kids but maybe u can adapt. the way ive seen it was the kids would give their parents "gift certificates" for things like a day of babysitting, cleaning their room... things that were usually hard for them. maybe it can be hachlotes taken on in their honor
- a calendar (not for a specific year) with each page a picture of a family or grankids (depending on the size) and on the dates fill in all the dates of the family; birthdays, anniversaries, yartzeit...
- a grammen

willow

Mon, Jun 04 2007, 5:50 am

Yes!!! You ladies always come through:)
greenfire- A sign-in book - I love it!
hila - Being that my Grandparents are not frum (although its a great idea:) I know they would not appreciate the Tzedakah in their name idea.
shoy18- Maybe my family can hire someone to come to the party and take a picture of them all.
Red sea- I think on the video each person is supposed to say something.
ganizzy- a grammen is definitely something to think about.

These are great! Keep the creativity and ideas coming.

HooRYou

Mon, Jun 04 2007, 6:03 am

Very similar to what has been mentioned but I knwo a family where they made a book with a page for each family member (the couples sometiems shared a page considering that the spouses of married grandchildren might not ahve had too much to say on their own page). Most of the pages had photos of the person either with or without the grandparents. Then there was text written by the person (assisted by an adult where necessary) about what they thought about the grandparents, learned from them, memories about them, etc.

Keep in mind that sometimes people (especially) older people prefer the lower technology stuff. For example, although we were constatly emailing baby pics to our family they were complaining that they didn't have pictures they could show their friends or display in the house. Things like books are nice since they are portable and easier to share.

micki

Mon, Jun 04 2007, 8:48 am

we just did for my in laws.
we all got together for a shabbos and everyone brought did things.
my daughter wrote a poem, I made a huge picture collage off all the kids and grandkids,
a grammen
kids wrote a song/dance
a book from winkflash of all the kids with their fmilies. a baby pic of each child on one page and the today pic on the following page.

Esther01

Mon, Jun 04 2007, 11:15 am

we did the scrapbook thing, for grandmother's 70 ths birthday. she loves it so much!!! she still talks about it and it's been a while since we gave it to her.

ganizzy

Mon, Jun 04 2007, 12:41 pm

we did the scrapbook also. zscrapbook.com has great templates and is very easy to do. the printing of the scrapbook would run you under $100 with all the extras and it looks really nice and professional