Our Backyard Grad Party

HE’S A DOCTOR! It was such a blast celebrating Matt on his huge accomplishment! May was a complete whirlwind between events for family and friends, and traveling - it seems like it breezed right by. I’ve basically been planning Matt’s grad party since he started med school. I knew it would be a big celebration but wanted to make sure above all, he felt the love and excitement on this massive accomplishment!

We had the party over Memorial Day weekend and thankfully the weather turned out beautiful for a backyard party! I transformed our yard into a few different areas: games, photo booth, food and the fire pit. I wanted to keep things inclusive so I made these wooden A-frame signs with different sayings by lettering them with letters cut from white contact paper using a cricut (so much cheaper than vinyl stickers!).

This party was a big DIY effort! I designed the invitations and found vintage stamps through Etsy + eBay which were perfect, given that Matt is an osteopathic doctor and the stamps were specific to osteopathic medicine. While I didn’t want to have tons of medical props, I decided to have each table with a different ‘did you know?’ fact about Matt’s med school journey or general osteopathic facts. Other signs were for the food, desserts, and photo booth. The photo booth was probably the longest DIY of the party - I reused our wedding arch and made the balloon garland for either side. I grabbed these props from amazon and stuck them in a little vase.

Since we had 70+ guests, I opted to get the food and the cake catered. The cake was out of this world! We got it from a local bakery and myself/family made the rest of the desserts - rice krispies, brownie bites, chocolate covered pretzels and assorted fruits.

It was such a sweet evening celebrating Matt and his road to becoming a doctor and all that lies ahead. It was so special to host and have everything come to life. I’m debating on posting the DIYs to the letter boards, table signage and a few other things - if you’re interested, leave a comment!