Planning a Centurion’s Birthday Party

January is an interesting and very exciting month in the calendar year. It signifies new beginnings and possibilities. Around the wedding planning business, it is also engagement season. This means that couples are getting engaged and won’t start picking their wedding planner until February or March. So, most event planners are working on other events such as baby showers, wedding showers, or birthday parties.

The build up to January 1 is always enormous and many of us start the new calendar year with high expectations and beliefs that anything can happen. We count down as the old year ends and rejoice as we ring in the new. My family has been particularly looking forward to January 16, 2020 with overwhelming anticipation. This is the day that my mother turns 100. We are so keenly aware of God’s blessing and grateful that she remains spry and mobile.

Being that she lives in Schenectady, NY, my sister and I decided to bypass the winter months and celebrate her birthday in October 2019. She was in rare form that night and had a wonderful time seeing people that she hadn’t seen in a while. We had guests from Texas, Indiana, Chicago, North Carolina, Florida, Maryland, and New York. The weather was great, the food was outstanding, and she was happy. It was a great night.

As I planned her 100th birthday party, I learned so many things about her and realized that she is a living history book. I had no idea that she had been to Cuba and was the first African-American female elementary school principal at the Horace Mann Elementary School in Illinois. All of this happened before she became my Mom and she never really talked about it. After she married my Dad, she focused her attention on him, my sisters, and me.

When I started my event planning career a few years ago, Mom said that she wanted to attend an event that I had planned. At the time, I didn’t think much about it; but, now, I am so honored that I had the opportunity to plan her party. It was such a labor of love; and, as I look at this video guest book, it depicts the highlight of my career.

Mom's 100th Birthday Party