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by Mandy Weckford

If you are going to be turning 40 in the next couple of months, you need to start planning – or making sure someone else is planning – the festivities. Your fortieth birthday is an occasion to be celebrated. You don’t have to have a party, if you don’t want to, but you do have to do something special. Over the past few years, what seems like hundreds of my friends and relations have hit 40, so, if you’re not sure what you’d like to do, here are a few suggestions.

In my family, we all love singing and one of the best parties we’ve ever been to was my brother Dan’s 40th, where we sang karaoke all night. He’s got loads of disks for his games console, which plugs into the back of the television and makes a home karaoke machine. The game keeps the score and is often quite rude but that didn’t stop us singing our hearts out into the small hours of the morning!

My cousin Alex and his wife spent his 40th birthday fulfilling his life’s ambition of driving Route 66 (the way to Amarillo). They had a fabulous holiday, full of adventures, and are still talking about it two years later.

It can also be great fun to have a traditional party at home and play lots of traditional party games. I acted as Mistress of Ceremonies for my friend Emma’s 40th and I got everyone doing things most of us hadn’t done since we were children. We played pass the parcel, musical statues, blind man’s buff, sardines, charades… We had all known each other for years and have no qualms about behaving like five year olds, and the evening was a riot!

About three months before she turned 40, my friend Karen discovered that her partner was seeing another woman. Her confidence took a bit of a knock and, to build it back up, we arranged a lingerie party for her birthday. We all needed a bit to drink before really got into the spirit of trying on sexy underwear but then we had a great laugh!

The idea of giving a dinner party for twenty guests fills me with horror but my friend Rob did this in the ideal way: he hired a professional chef to come to his house and cook for us, in front of us. Rob is a real foodie and having all this sumptuous fare rustled up in his very own kitchen was a dream come true.

A magician is an excellent addition to any party. At my friend Jason’s 40th birthday party, the magician took my ring and made it vanish. A second later, without him having moved at all, it appeared tied on to his shoelace!

Before long I’m going to be forty myself and I’ve decided to go to New York, with my husband, for my birthday. I have never been there but I just get the feeling I want to be in the Big Apple to greet the big four oh. I want to see all the sights, check out the art galleries, watch a show on Broadway, do some shopping and soak up some of the energy of that great city. This seems a pretty cool start to my fifth decade.

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To find further ideas and advice about 40th birthday parties, celebrations & gifts, have a look at our 40th birthday website.