Buy a garland or bush of faux fall leaves, peel them off the plastic veining. Use a gold paint pen or fine point gold marker to write your parents' first names and wedding date on them, and scatter those around the gold pumpkins. Buy inexpensive plain glass votive holders, wrap with a strip of vellum cut to fit around the votive holder (overlap and close with double-faced tape) put a gold votive inside and write their names and wedding date on the vellum, then use the same pen to run a narrow band of gold on the top and bottom of each piece of vellum. Glue a silk leaf (veining removed) to the bottom with Aleene's Tacky glue or hot glue, and scatter a few of those on the tables for candlelight. You might check first to see if those are allowed - some banquet venues are funky about how candles can be used. Congrats to your parents on a wonderful milestone! Hope the party is terrific, and that you can relax and enjoy it, too!

Oh my, Allison I am sorry! I wondered how your DD2 became engaged and married so fast :-( I should have known you would at least have posted a dress issue or something on the conversations board with all that wedding talk! Very sorry for that misunderstanding. But initially the posts that crossed over to houzz were not dated, so I had no idea the thread was four years old. Now I see they are dated, although in the faintest possible ink color. (Houzz must have mostly 20 and 30 something users with better eyesight.) At any rate, the groom may not have been a keeper but the flowers were lovely!

ellendi, there is going to be a 16x 20 covered lounge area-I'm turning it into something similar to a mandap, frequently used in Indian weddings. It's going to have casual seating, lots of pillows, rugs, etc and I've got lanterns and candeliers. I've got lots of sheers to hang on the sides also. This will be one of the low seating pieces. Gold-I dream of doing this! I am always roped in to decorate for our Division holiday party, and I've decorated a couple of retirement parties at work-all on virtually a zero budget. I also did DD2's wedding-I love doing it for events. Couldn't do it for someone's home-since I love to do over the top-but parties, oh yeah!

I am sure Talley Sue is correct about what Crane's and other authorities say. And I get the point about simplicity, hosts only listed on the invitation, and the invitation not being about credits. However, I can tell you that we get dozens of wedding invitations every year, and they all give the groom's parents' names, too. The only exceptions are the ones from much older couples who are issuing the invitations themselves, or from couples who style the invitation "Together with their parents/families, Petunia Smith and Cuthbert Jones request the pleasure of your company as they are married ...." The latter formulation seems to be when there is some sort of complicated family circumstance regarding lots of stepparents or something. Even the ones that have, in every other respect, the most formal wording, still include the grooms' parents' names: "Mr. and Mrs. Zebulon Smith request the honour of your presence at the marriage of their daughter, Petunia Ann, to Cuthbert Arthur Jones, son of Mr. and Mrs. Norbert Jones ...." I imagine that in many cases, both sets of parents are hosting, or at least contributing money. But even where (as the formal wording indicates) only the brides' parents are, they always name the groom's parents, too. My point is that even though this is not correct per the etiquette rule, it is so firmly established a convention in my community that to leave off the grooms' parents names would be considered a major insult on the part of the bride's parents and would be taken as a real humiliation by the groom's parents. I'm not arguing the etiquette rule; I'm just saying that it doesn't end the analysis.