Anna Mellor and her husband have found a way to celebrate their wedding anniversary and include their young children in the festivities. The couple decided to reframe the special holiday as a “family birthday” party, and they transformed their eighth wedding anniversary into a day filled with family-friendly activities.
In a TikTok video that has received over 1.7 million views, Mellor shared a glimpse of their family birthday celebration. The clip shows the Mellor family picking up a celebration cake and taking it home. They lit candles and sang, “Happy birthday to us,” before eating cake together.
The video has prompted viewers in the comments to gush and praise the idea, with many saying they will adopt it for themselves. Mellor said the idea was born from the desire to integrate her small children, 1 and 4 years old, into their anniversary celebration.
“I’ve always looked at our anniversary as so I thought it would be fun to get a birthday cake to celebrate our ‘family birthday’ and tie it all together,” Mellor said.
The Mellors turned 8 🥹
The family had a busy but relaxed day together. Beginning in the morning, they went to one of their favorite breakfast restaurants in Austin, Texas—with a kid’s play area, of course—and had pancakes.
“It was pouring rain, but we still sat outside, ate pancakes, and let the kids play in the rain,” Mellor said. “It rained all day on our wedding day, so it was kind of surreal to reflect back on eight years ago, waking up to rain on our wedding day—and now here we are with two beautiful kids, living our dream life, still in the rain.”
Afterwards, the family went home to watch a movie and cuddle up on the couch. They eventually went to pick our their “birthday” cake.
“We came home and decided to go all in,” Mellor said. “Put candles on the cake. Turn off the lights. Sing happy birthday. Singing happy birthday to ‘us’ was a very special memory and we definitely plan on celebrating our ‘family birthday’ every year.”
While some in the comments mentioned the being a date for the couple apart from the commitments of children, Mellor said they took this into consideration and made both work. After the children went to bed that night, and went to an intimate dinner just the two of them.
“We talked about the past eight years and how excited we are for the next 80-plus,” Mellor said. “It was the perfect day.”
