I flew to Kansas on Thursday to help my parents with the annual Valentine’s Banquet they help host for their church and community. This is an annual tradition they started years ago and it’s a much-anticipated event every year. I thought you would enjoy seeing a recap of the event and it might inspire you with ideas for events you might help host or give you ideas if you’d like to do something similar in your community!
Last year, I got to help with it and enjoyed it so much that I asked if I could come back again this year to help! The preparation for it starts weeks in advance with planning the theme and the decor and the menu plan. It takes a lot of hands and volunteer hours to pull off and the end results were incredible!
Friday morning, we went to the church to help with the cooking prep and decor set-up. I helped make the dessert (cheesecake in chocolate bowls) — I made 6 batches (I think?) of the cheesecake mixture, washed over 100 goblet glasses, helped plan the strategy for all the serving, and helped chop and peel food and clean up. It was so fun to watch it all come to life and how many hands truly made light work!
My sister, Olivia, made dairy-free, gluten-free desserts for those with sensitivities/allergies. The dinner menu was fully gluten-free except the rolls and she also made gluten-free rolls for those who were GF.
We had 56 couples who RSVP’d for the event + all the servers and extra helpers, so all totaled it was around 140 people who would be eating dinner, which meant there was lots and lots of food to make!
While some of us were working on food, there was a whole other team of people working on transforming the worship center into a banquet hall!
During the dinner, each table was given discussion questions to talk about together (see below). Then, after the dinner, my dad led some fun couple games (with prizes!), then gave an inspiring talk on marriage, and then the couples all went off individually to discuss some questions specifically to help strengthen their marriage and spend time praying together.
I got the incredible privilege of getting to oversee the 18 servers and all the food going out to everyone’s table. I just have to say, I came away so encouraged by watching the next generation of young people. So many of the servers were young men and I was blown away by their willingness to volunteer hours of their time to work so hard, have such great attitudes, take such initiative, and not stop until all the dishes were done and everything was cleaned up.
At the beginning, when every couple arrived, they had their photo taken by Andrew Cook. Then, during the banquet, he had them all printed and put them into frames so that everyone got to take one home at the end as a special memento of the evening.
Here’s my parents’ photo. It was so special to get to help them out and work together with them on this event!
Some of the photos in this post were taken by Andrew Cook Photography and used with permission.
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