How to plan a 40th or 50th birthday dinner in Vancouver

By forty, many of us have been to enough loud birthday parties to know which part we remember: the table. The long one, where the conversation ran past dessert and somebody finally told the full story of that camping trip. That's the case for making a 40th or 50th a dinner rather than a party. So this guide spends less time on decor and more on the room, the drinks and the ride home.

If you're the friend who somehow ended up with the spreadsheet, most of this is the same anywhere. What Vancouver adds is a liquor permit for rented rooms, a long rainy season and a transit map that thins out after midnight.

Start with the guest list, because it chooses the room

Before you look at a single space, write down the names. The number decides most of what follows.

• Around 12 to 20: a home dinner or a restaurant's private room, where one toast reaches the whole table.
• Around 20 to 40: a rented room starts to make sense, and so does hiring a caterer instead of cooking.
• 50 and up: between April and September a park shelter becomes an option (with a permit), and you'll probably want someone running the evening so the guest of honour isn't checking the oven.

One opinion: resist inviting everyone you've ever worked with. A milestone dinner works best when the guest of honour can get around the whole table in one evening, and past a certain size that stops being possible.

Home, a rented room or a park shelter

At home is the most personal option and the lightest on paperwork. Pouring wine at your own table doesn't need a liquor permit. Your limit is the clock: Vancouver's Noise Control By-law sets quiet hours from 10pm to 7am (10am on Sundays and holidays), so plan for any music to wind down before ten.

A rented room suits the 20-to-40 range, and City of Vancouver community centres rent rooms for this kind of event. Read the cancellation terms before you pay: at Creekside, for example, there's no refund if you cancel less than 30 days out and only half back between 30 and 60 days.

A park is a spring-and-summer option: the City only takes picnic-site reservations from April 1 to September 30. In that window, every designated Stanley Park picnic site sits under a shelter with water and electricity, and some offer kitchen access on request. Groups of 50 to 150 need a permit and a designated site (some cap at 75). The dinner slot runs 4pm to 9:30pm, with at least five business days' notice. An acoustic guitar is fine. A speaker system needs a separate approval.

If you're serving drinks in a rented space

In BC, serving liquor at an event in a public place (a rented hall, a community centre room, a park) needs a Special Event Permit from the Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch, and the province asks you to apply and pay at least four to six weeks in advance.

The permit costs $25 per day per location for a private event, family SEPs included, and $100 for a public one. For a dinner this size, whoever pours needs Special Event Server certification (Serving It Right is the requirement for events of 500 or more), and you'll need a site plan showing where drinks will be served. Apply the week you settle the venue.

Pick the neighbourhood before the restaurant

Gastown, with its cobblestone streets and tight cluster of cocktail bars, makes it easy to meet for a drink and walk to dinner. Mount Pleasant, around Main Street, mixes breweries and owner-run spots for a looser crowd. Commercial Drive has a long-standing independent food scene, good for a group that likes to wander after the meal.

For a family-style banquet where the dishes keep arriving, Richmond is hard to beat, between Food Street on Alexandra Road and the Golden Village. And if half the guests live on the North Shore, Lonsdale Quay is a SeaBus ride from downtown, which settles the question of who drives.

A timeline that works backwards from the date

Apart from the liquor permit, which is the province's own timeline, these are general industry rules of thumb rather than Vancouver figures, so treat them as a skeleton:

• Twelve to 18 months out, only for a sought-after band: industry guidance says in-demand acts for prime dates are often hired that early. Many working musicians need far less notice.
• Two to three months out: settle the date, the guest list and the room. If you want a photographer, ask about their availability now rather than later.
• Four to six weeks out: the liquor permit application should be in by now if you need one. Send the invitation.
• Three to four weeks out: confirm the caterer. Catering guidance puts casual private parties at two to three weeks' notice, and three to four for groups of 40 or more.
• Two to three days out: give the final headcount. Private dining spaces commonly set that deadline 48 to 72 hours before, with the deposit tied to the number.

Plan for rain, and for the ride home

A dinner between October and April lands in Vancouver's wet season, and November through January is usually the wettest stretch. That just means a room with somewhere to put thirty wet coats, a covered spot near the door, and an evening that doesn't depend on a patio.

Then the ride home, especially if there's wine. SeaBus crosses between Waterfront Station and Lonsdale Quay in about 12 minutes. The last boats leave Waterfront around 1:20am Monday to Saturday and around 11:20pm on Sundays and holidays, and they leave Lonsdale Quay earlier (about 1am and 11pm), so check the schedule for your date. Later than that, NightBus leaves Granville and Georgia from about 1:30am, every 20 to 30 minutes, with routes to Burnaby, Coquitlam, North Vancouver, Richmond, Surrey and UBC. Put the NightBus route or the last SeaBus time in the invitation, so nobody has to work it out at 1am.

Give the toasts a plan

Choose two or three people to speak, tell them well in advance, and put them between the main course and dessert, when everyone has eaten and nobody has left yet.

Ask one person to gather a few photos from each decade. Pass the printed stack around between courses and people start telling stories about the guest of honour. If the guest of honour grew up between two cultures, say in a Brazilian-Chinese family, let the menu say so too: a dessert from each side of the family, and someone at the table will have a story about each one.

Photos by M F, Martin Baron, Oleg, Perspective Studio and Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash.