Navy and Orange

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pulling off a surprise party

mom surprise party

So… to start at the beginning, my family has 12 birthdays between mid September to mid November, with seven of them being in October. These include my brother, me, my aunt, and my sister-law, my husband, my mom and my brother’s wife in the matter of four days at the end of the month. And to make matters more complicated, the math works out that on big birthday {every 5 years} my mom, my brother’s wife {who I will refer to as my sister from here forward, since I have 3 sisters in law} and me all have BIG birthdays. This year was one of them.

Plus, I am a birthday monster. And despite there being so many birthdays in the fall, no one really celebrates just one day. So last year, we began talking about my mom’s big birthday the following year. She said she didn’t want to do anything, so naturally I started brainstorming the idea of throwing her a surprise party. My dad, my husband and brother and sister were on board.

When looking ahead to October 2018, we realized her birthday was on a Saturday, so trying to sneak her to be anywhere without her suspecting anything was not realistic. Yet…my birthday was on a Thursday two weeks earlier than my mom’s birthday, so me wanting to do something Thursday night AND Friday night would not be out of character.

dixie designs custom invitation

We picked the date and the venue, then sent out a Save the Date via an online invitation. Midsummer, I began designing the cutest invitations with DIXIE DESIGNS. Their design team makes everything custom and walked me through some decisions that I would have normally run by mom {wording, what monogram looked better, what invitation was more elegant, etc.}. I sent the proofs to my sister and best friends to get their assistance and after about 4 drafts {I have been known to be particular}, and they went to press. We started to send them out, which was a bit more difficult, as the extensive guest list that my dad provided had many people that were not on my Christmas Card mailing list. My mom is in charge of addresses between her and my dad, so I could ask her. Thank goodness for her helpful friends.

surprise party for mom

My dad and I began to have weekly lunches at the RANCHO SANTA FE GOLF CLUB, the venue, to meet with the coordinator, but with the preference of a family lunch in case we ran into my mom there {she is everywhere. All the time. And loves to golf, so running into her there would not be ununusal}.

We picked the menu {neither of my parents tend to eat very much, they are both native Californians, so we did light appetizers and heavy cakes from THYME IN THE RANCH. I also got my wedding cakes from here. It is nearly impossible to pick a favorite but their carrot cake is unlike any other I have tried. Plus it is the cake we cut at our wedding}, picked out details and began to spin a bit of a tale.

I had to play off that we didn’t have a plan that Friday night because if we had a restaruant and time too much ahead of time, it would be suspicious. My dad travels a bunch and has a boat that he is on more often than not. So in Nantucket, we were on a family beach walk and my mom asked if I wanted her to plan a little party with my friends for my birthday {don’t forget: I had a big birthday this year too!}. I played it off like I might, then asked my dad, right in front of my mom, “Hey Dow {my brother and I call him Dow} are you planning on being around in mid October, or do you think you might be on the boat?” He responds, “I don’t know, I will have to look at a calendar and check to see how many [frequent flyer] miles I have.” I was quite impressed with this unplanned response. None of this was out of ordinary as my dad has missed birthdays before for being on the boat and he does decide his travel due to miles.

 

BOW BACK DRESS // NAVY BOW SANDALS // CLIP ON EARRINGS

Naturally, one of my big concerns was how to make sure she was dressed for the party. The invitation stated to “Wear Your Shelby Colors: The Brighter the Better,” and she loves the color yellow, so I ordered this and this pink Valentino made me think of her. I also told her some song and dance about loving this orange striped dress that she got for my brother’s wedding but ended up wear something else. I said I wanted to get an Instagram photo in it, so she lent it to me. My idea was for her to have some options of what to change into, since she might have dressed a little differently thinking it was my birthday celebration versus once she realized she was at her birthday party. She ended up staying in what she was originally wearing, but these are the kind of details that are beyond thoughtful, yet don’t need to be carried out. The idea that I had thought of this, made my mom feel special and more confident in what she already had on.

Finally, after all details were set, the flowers were ordered and the goodie bags assembled, Fernando set out a family text saying that we would have a family dinner to celebrate me at the club at 6:30 pm on Friday. On Thursday night, celebrating a casual birthday dinner at home with my parents, my mom asked why we picked there and I spun a story of my mother in law, suggesting we go there since she is gluten free. Fernando chimes in that we have this back room for the dinner, to which I pretended I didn’t know where it was. I might have gone too far saying that my grandmother-in-law, who was in town might not come to dinner, since she was traveling to Europe the next day. I even said that my sister and brother wouldn’t be at dinner on Thursday, since she is pregnant and wouldn’t have energy for two nights of activities, {kind of true, but I also thought if everyone came over Thursday, what would be the point of playing along that we were going out Friday to celebrate too?}.

surprise party flowers and goodie bag

the flowers and goodie bags, with tags from Dixie Designs

I enjoyed my birthday, was fully convinced my mom knew about the party the next night, as I had been having nightly nightmares that she did, and went to bed. I didn’t sleep much, 100% in a panic that the party wouldn’t be fun, the food wouldn’t be good, and nobody would be on time. In the morning, the morning of, I had a full fledged panic attack, where I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think and couldn’t stop crying. I calmly, or kind of, took Madrid to school and Leo for a walk around the golf course, picked up and delivered the cakes {I ordered 6!} and took them to the venue.

When I saw the room set up, I started crying, I’m not sure why, but probably relief. Relief that this massive secrets and hundreds of hours of planning was hours away and everything would be fine.

Throughout the process, I kept telling my dad, brother, sister and myself that the entire point was to make her feel special and loved. If she found out the day of, or the first day of planning, this would be accomplished, so there was no point stressing about it.

{Also, the Friday of the event could not have been possible without my best friend, who drove in from LA the morning of to make the cover that she was there for my birthday weekend to my mom, but was really there to help. She helped load the cakes, entertain Leo while I dropped off wine and kept me sane. She also had the brilliant idea of getting our hair and makeup done in the afternoon while the kids were napping so I would relax. Yes, we had champagne.}

In the invitation, I told everyone to be prompt at 6pm. About 80% of everyone was there at 5:50pm. My mom wasn’t due to arrive until 6:30 pm but tends to run late. My dad is a little late to the iPhone game, so he couldn’t really text me without my mom being onto something. We developed the plan that he would call me and hang up from his cell phone while waiting for my mom in the car. This detail alone was iffy, as he never carries his cell phone nor makes calls from it. He called and hung up, I set a timer for 8 minutes and began to tell everyone to quiet down.

I started to shake, tear up and giggle uncontrollably. My husband, my brother, his wife and myself all stood near the door that she would be entering from and waited.

She walked in right on time, with the coordinator signaling me as she peeked through the door.

My mom had no idea!

Her face, captured by ASHA BAILEY PHOTOGRAPHY, was perfect and the party could begin!

It honestly was such a relief, an extremely fun night and felt like a wedding. My mom couldn’t stop smiling and called me the next morning saying that she stayed awake all night, feeling very loved and special and replaying all the details in her head.

SUCESS!

surprise party success

 

So…

My Tips for a Successful Surprise Party

  1. Plan early and often: start the planning as soon as you have the idea, especially if multiple people will be helping you plan. More people can be more help, but also more opinions. I didn’t have this problem, as I was planning with family but I cannot recommend staring to plan as early as possible.
  2. Assume things will go wrong: The day of, my husband gave the sound advice of thinking 3 things will go wrong. So I could only panic when the 4th thing went wrong. The only thing that went wrong was that my mom didn’t wear my back up dress options, but she still looked adorable and we were unintentionally matching.
  3. Get a photographer and have people video: I was there, front and center but have still watched the video of her walking in about 10 times. Nerves make these simple moments easy to forget. Obviously, from the content of this post, you can see what an amazing job ASHA did with the photos. If professional photos aren’t in the budget, make room that they are. It is 1,000% worth it.
  4. Get good wine and dessert: nobody really cares about anything else. I mean, they might, but do you? With everyone getting to the party 40 minutes before food would be passed made everyone in high spirits {read: heavy on the cocktails} and the party festive and light hearted.
  5. Get everything done by the morning of: delegate or get everything done or arranged to be at the venue 12 hours, at the minimum, before the party and ideally 4 days in advance. To know that by noon on the day of the party, there was nothing else for me to do besides get ready made me enjoy the day and relax.

 

 

List of Vendors

Venue & Coordinator : RANCHO SANTA FE GOLF CLUB

Food: RANCHO SANTA FE GOLF CLUB

Wine: Private Santa Ynez Estate Wine, Y3 PINOT NOIR and FERRARI-CARANO RESERVE CHARDONNAY

Champagne: SHRAMBERG BLANC de BLANC

Photographer: ASHA BAILEY PHOTOGRAPHY

Cakes: THYME IN THE RANCH

Stationery: DIXIE DESIGN

Flowers: FRANCO’S FLOWERS 

Dessert: RANCHO SANTA FE GOLF CLUB

My mom’s dress: Vintage Ralph Lauren

My Dress: BOW BACK DRESS

My Hair & Makeup: KISSED BY AML

 

 

 

 

congrats to @oh_jmarie for winning the fleece giveaway! Please email me or direct message me in Instagram with you address. I have that you would like the black fleece in Medium!

 

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