My parents spent 25 years celebrating me. For their 30th anniversary, I finally got to celebrate them.

My parents met in May 1986, when they were just 14 and 15 years old, and started dating in September that same year. Just a month later, my mom turned 15.

They were married in June 1996, at Alex & Henry's, a then-popular catering hall that closed a few years later.

This year, the day before their official 30th anniversary, my twin brother and I pulled off what I'd argue was one of the best surprises of our adult lives: a party with more than 40 of their closest friends and family members.

My grandma traveled from Delaware to our hometown in Westchester County to help bring the surprise together. For months, she fielded my frantic calls about table arrangements, centerpieces, and cake flavors, while I dodged my parents at home. Trying to surprise the people you live with is no small feat.

I quietly texted out invitations, made decorations, including "Back in 1996" cards for each place setting, and coordinated with vendors and the restaurant to make sure every detail was just right.

My brother and his girlfriend needed a believable reason to come home from Austin for the weekend. He told my parents they'd visit to celebrate their pearl anniversary, which made sense before a major work trip.

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That afternoon, my boyfriend and I left the house first — racing to the restaurant just a few minutes away, leaving my brother with the coveted task of escorting my parents inside without them noticing the familiar cars belonging to friends and family in the parking lot.

They turned the corner expecting to sit down at a table for six, but instead were met with a roar of "Surprise!" in a room full of their favorite people.

As they bounced between tables, they embraced, laughed, caught up, and reminisced while admiring the several photo boards my grandma had made, which captured decades of their love story in still moments.

This joy has lingered in conversations, in the photo boards my mom kept displayed around the house, and the cake-table decorations draped over the piano. The pieces of that day scattered throughout our home became reminders that our parents are more than the people who raised us — they are people with their own stories, memories, and milestones worth celebrating.

They had already spent years together before my brother and I were born in 2000. They had been teenagers, friends, boyfriend and girlfriend, and eventually husband and wife. They had memories and inside jokes, losses and milestones, dreams and disappointments that belonged entirely to them.