Tips For Celebrating Special Occasions During Quarantine
You never picture celebrating your 10 year wedding anniversary, an engagement, your spouse’s 40th Birthday, a college graduation, etc. stuck in your house with nowhere to go celebrate and unable to throw a party with all of your friends and family. We all look forward to these monumental moments in our lives so we can have the celebration. Even holidays, they happen each year but we get so eager and excited each year to play out our favorite traditions, whether it be Easter Sunday with an egg hunt and dressing up for church, or a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner with your spouse. We get so excited for these moments in our lives and we look back on these memories with so much joy.
I don’t think Covid and the pandemic should take away from our celebrations of special occasions. I think it’ll require extra effort and creativity at times to make the moment special, but I don’t think it’s impossible. In fact I think some of these occasions can be even more special because of the extra thought and creativity that must go into making an event special despite all that is going on.
1. little planning goes a long way
In these strange times we are now living in, having a special occasion or celebration can be a great way to break up the monotony of every day feeling (being) the same. Having a celebration and making it special really comes down to how well you plan ahead. With everyone being on quarantine, a lot of services and restaurants have different schedules and rules than they did before. With a little bit of planning ahead you can still make the occasion special you just have to be on top of it. With all the changes in the world right now, there is also opportunity to have the celebration be more special. For Mothers Day, we ended up ordering flowers through a friend that has her own flower business, and they ended up being much better and prettier than anything we would have gotten from the store. And by buying from her not only did she deliver the flowers but we were supporting her business through these rough times.
Here’s another example that we’re doing - Giulian’s birthday is in June (about a month from this writing) and for his birthday cake we decided what kind of cake we wanted. Actually he decided, and its going to be a Paw Patrol cake. So, we already reached out to our friend who is a baker and put the order in. We decided who is going to come to the party, where its going to be, so that people can plan to be there. It’s really just going to be close family because unfortunately we just don’t know what things are going to look like a month from now so keeping it to family is the safest bet. I plan on doing all that I can to make the celebration special despite the fact that his friends won’t be there. I’ll order balloons, plan to have his favorite foods and I will probably have his friends record videos saying happy birthday that we can show his the day of his party.
So, for your next celebration how could you plan ahead? What extra touches can a little planning add to your special day?
2. Get creative
This is where the “extra touches” comes in. Brainstorm and think of extra ways to make the person you’re celebrating feel extra special. Is it Father’s Day? Maybe you can make Dad his favorite breakfast, order a custom gift, create a sweet homemade card made with extra love, or make a list with the kids of reasons you’re grateful for him. It really just comes down to creating simple moments that make the occasion special and make the person feel loved. Our friend recently celebrated his 30th Birthday and his wife scheduled a zoom call with all of his best friends so everyone could sing to him and wish him a happy birthday. Such a simple thing to do but what a wonderful gesture during this time.
Is your anniversary coming up? You could surprise your spouse with a scavenger hunt around the house where they find their favorite things hidden. You could put together a picture book on Shutterfly of your love story and surprise them with it. You could plan a backyard picnic with their favorite foods. Just get creative, heck if you have to Google or head to Pinterest for ideas, do it. Another great idea for celebrating an anniversary is to try tip #3 (see below).
3. Try something new
For an event to be special especially during these times we are finding ourselves trying lots of new things. Before this all happened you could easily just do what you normally do, say for a date night. It was easy - have a night out on the town, go walk around and look in stores, window shop, order from your favorite restaurants, no problem. Now we need to be willing to try new things, which is actually more fun!
So here’ something we’re doing. For our date nights we used to walk around town and do a lot of what I mentioned above - walk around the neighborhood, walk into a restaurant, eat, go get ice cream, etc. Now what we are doing is venturing out a little more from what we are used to. A lot of restaurants are doing take out. And some of the take out options are just INCREDIBLE. Ocean Prime is a restaurant we haven’t eaten at before but we’ve heard amazing things about it. So in the interest of trying some new things and being more willing to do takeout due to the current circumstances - we put an order in at Ocean Prime. And normally we’d each order what we want and eat our meals separately. But since Ocean Prime has a family style option, and trying new things during all this makes it all a little more fun, we went with the family style option. We were not disappointed.
We now know why Ocean Prime has such an outstanding reputation. From the moment we went to pick up our order we could tell a difference in service. They had a valet style setup that you could just pull up and park and someone would meet you at your car to ask for the take out name. They’d then go inside, get the order and deliver it right to you at your car. We also noticed a difference in the food quality and service. From the little things like the surprise of our order coming with additional treats like pretzel bread sticks and popcorn (a garlic/truffle popcorn), to the big things - the main course, the salad and sides it was all done so well. The house salad was incredible, it had green apples, walnuts, feta cheese and the perfect dressing for the style of salad. The truffle mac n’ cheese was out of this world, it was my favorite part of the meal and Giulian couldn’t get enough of it. The brussels sprouts were cooked just the way you’d like them to be and the braised short ribs were as good of ribs we’ve ever had. After sharing online that we were getting take out from Ocean Prime, we had a bunch of friends reach out and tell us how much they loved it there, and it’s really no mystery why. They really do everything right. Take out was easy, the service was amazing and the food was delicious.
I know that the times we are living in are weird and extremely inconvenient, but I truly believe we can still make life’s greatest moments just as special as they would have been in different circumstances. I hope you find these ideas helpful. Comment below, I’d love to hear how you’re making your personal special occasions extra special and what you’re doing during these times to make events more fun.
