A Bagpipe Salute to 40

This was the party I was reluctant to share with you, for fear the birthday girl wouldn't want me to...silly me, it's already been featured here and here.

A few Saturday nights ago, C. invited us to her very elegant 40th birthday party, held at a beautiful mansion on the Upper East Side of New York.

The invites were sent via Paperless Post -- a very elegant evite option. If you haven't seen it yet, the invitation comes out of an "envelope" and lends a bit more formality to an emailed invitation.

The dress was Black Tie - on the way to the party, my husband and I realized that we were both wearing clothes we got for free. He received his tuxedo as a hand-me-down from his mom's former boss(in 8th grade, no less!) and I got my Oscar de la Renta dress when an old boss of mine didn't want it! Let's hear it for former bosses.

We pulled up in a taxi and even the taxi driver was taken back. "Wow," he said. The long covered entrance to the building was aglow in soft blue lighting, and the path was lined with an enormous Pipe Band (bagpipers) - the Saffron United Pipe Band of Babylon, NY, one of the East Coast's finest. It was like a gauntlet - you almost expected to hear your names announced with titles like Lord or Earl added to the front of them.

We headed in the building and up the beautiful circular stairs to the historic ballroom - lit up in red lights, with dozens of votive candles in the fireplace. The DJ kept the tunes coming, the hors d'ouevres kept going and going, and the birthday girl looked fabulous - like Oscars fabulous.

The photographer for the evening was none other than our own wedding photographer, Andrew Bicknell. His photos were amazing (with the exception of the ones of me, which I can only blame on myself for awkwardly tucking my camera case under one armpit and evening bag under the other, while taking photos and looking generally gawky.) His photos are the two top ones above. I'll find one of my geeky-gawky ones and add it.

The birthday girl shared some beautiful words with the crowd (and so did her lovely daughter - a daunting task to speak to 200 adults when you're 8, but she was fantastic!)and danced the night away. It was a fabulous 40th birthday!