Micah Ryan Designs

Death to My 20’s

My best friend and I were both OG emo’s in the early 2000’s, so when her 30th birthday rolled she highlighted that her dream party would be a throwback to her high school emo days.

After brainstorming some ideas around this theme, we found the perfect way to incorporate her request, while also surprising her with some extra twists and turns: Death to My 20’s (Emo Style) was born!

The idea began by deciding to model her party after a real funeral (this part she was not expecting). We setup my entryway to look like you were walking into a funeral:

To create a funeral home feel I setup a photo stand with a large framed print of the birthday girl in the back corner leading into the main funeral (party) area. We chose her most iconic emo throwback photo for this purpose to help set the tone.

I decorated my entry table with Colleen’s senior photo in a matted frame, black roses in a vase, a “System of a Down” record (used as the guest book w/ sharpies for signing), brochures with the order of events for the funeral, and a sign welcoming guests to the funeral of xColleen.Collisionx (Colleen’s old ’emo name’). This sign and the detail on the brochures revealed our twist: we were throwing this “Death to My 20’s” funeral for Colleen’s emo alter-ego!

We created the brochures in Canva and printed in black and white on a home printer. In front were the words “In memory of xColleen.Collisionx’s youth” along with a photo of the “deceased”. Inside we included the order of events of the birthday party.

“Ingredients” for a ‘Death to My 20’s’ Birthday Party | Entryway

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Once inside the living room we greeted our birthday girl with her “cringiest” memories at a ‘memorial’ table. We took a table and filled it with mementoes borrowed from her mom and husband, who both scoured their attics and homes for the perfect items to display.

Alot of personalization comes in here: We displayed (amongst other things) a prom dress that we like to give her grief about, a metro station poster, CD’s of some of her favorite bands, old artwork she’d done, a copy of twilight, and the crowning jewel (no pun intended)… her baby teeth!!

As you can see I didn’t list every single item we placed, but the purpose of this table was to make her laugh. In case you were curious, we were successful! This was a cool way to continue unifying our two themes (funeral and emo).

If you look on the left a bit you’ll see that we also added here a tattoo station. I ordered tattoos from a mix of some of her favorite bands and we added a sign that said “In honor of xColleen.Collisionx, please apply a tattoo”.

On the right I added a ‘Merch’ station which acted as party favor items for the purposes of this party.

“Ingredients” for a ‘Death to My 20’s’ Birthday Party | Memorabilia Table

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The next piece to the party puzzle was the food area. For this there was two pieces: the cake area and the dining area.

A ton of teamwork went into every aspect of this party- but I leaned heavily on my friends for desserts and dining table decorations.

On the left we had cookies created by the amazing Caseyjo_Cookies, our best friend who happens to be a phenomenal cookie artist! These also unified our theme with “RIP” and “Elder Emo”. In the middle we placed a cake that I requested from a local bakery, and on the right were pretzel cigarette’s made by another talented friend!

The dining table was 100% the creation and execution by the talented Casey (who also made our themed cookies).

With a second black cheesecloth table runner, candlesticks, and roses she created a gothic-style table setup perfect for our ‘mourning’. She also created specialized place settings “to” each guest “from” the deceased (Colleen). These specialized place settings included a mixed CD with the classic emo playlist of tunes written on the outside #nostalgia.

“Ingredients” for a ‘Death to My 20’s’ Birthday Party | Dessert & Dining Tables

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Finally we have the finishing touches that bring this whole party together!

  1. We had every single guest dress as a 2000’s emo kid! It was fun seeing the true elder emo’s breakout their old staples and the attendees that had clearly just typed “emo” into google!
  2. We eulogized our birthday girl!! Every single guest stood up and gave a eulogy (which turned out to be half roasting) the birthday girl. We all laughed so hard we cried, and these speeches are now a core memory!
  3. Last is we put together a classic Spotify playlist of 2000’s emo tunes and played it over a slideshow of throwback photos of the birthday girl. We kept this on a loop all night long.

I hope that this inspires your own party and that you get just as many laughs!

If you’d like to see my other 30th birthday party event, check out 13 Going on 30 – a millennial throwback party rooted in nostalgia!

Thanks for attending xColleen.Collisionx’s funeral!

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