I knew exactly what she meant.
So I got to work.
For three weekends, I visited restaurants and private event venues around Dayton.
I compared menus, seating arrangements, parking, lighting, and service.
Eventually, I found Alderwood.
It was a beautiful historic restaurant near the river, with stone walls and a warm, inviting atmosphere.
The private dining room was called the Hearthstone Room.
It had tall windows overlooking the water, exposed wooden beams, and a magnificent stone fireplace.
The moment I stepped inside, I could picture my parents celebrating there.
The restaurant manager, Daniel, showed me around.
He was a friendly man in his mid-forties, with silver beginning to show at his temples.
He told me about a couple who had returned to the restaurant to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary because they’d held their wedding reception in the same room decades earlier.
I looked toward the fireplace.
“This is perfect.”
I reserved the space for forty guests.
I selected roast beef, salmon, pasta, salads, and several desserts.
I arranged a champagne toast.
Then I contacted a florist and ordered white roses and pale pink peonies because they matched the flowers in Mom’s wedding bouquet.
The restaurant deposit was twenty-five hundred dollars.
The flowers cost another eleven hundred.
I paid both without telling my parents the amounts.
Then I authorized the restaurant to charge the remaining event balance to my card after the celebration.
Daniel explained the arrangement carefully.
“The final amount will be processed at the end of the evening, unless you request a change.”
“That’s fine,” I told him.
I genuinely wanted to give my parents a beautiful anniversary.
On my way home, I stopped at a department store.
That was where I found the red dress.
It was elegant, with a fitted bodice and a flowing skirt.
The fabric was a rich, deep red that seemed to glow beneath the dressing-room lights.
It cost three hundred dollars.
