The Joy of Being Retired
Why Retirement Rocks (and Work Sucks!)

Ideas for Retirement Parties

This webpage contains Tips and Ideas for Retirement Parties as well as Retirement Gift Ideas to help retirees celebrate retirement. This is in line with the philosophy of The Joy of Being Retired Website, which is to celebrate retirement and enjoy it instead of looking at it as a bad thing.

Many Canadian Retirees Don't Celebrate

with Retirement Parties But Some Do

A recent survey from Fidelity Investments Canada ULC found that summer time is the best time to retire for Canadians. Fidelity Canadian Retirement Survey discovered that June, July and August are the months when the highest numbers of Canadians retire. Unfortunately, the survey indicated that more retirees are finding retiring is getting harder.

"Fidelity's research shows that when it comes to the timing of their retirement, the summer months are the tops for Canadians. When you consider the relatively short summer Canada enjoys, it seems that retiring Canadians want to take full advantage of the summer months by not spending them at work," says Peter Drake, vp, economic and retirement research, Fidelity.

While Fidelity's research shows that more Canadians retired in the summer months, for almost four-in-10 Canadians celebrating their retirement certainly was not their first priority. Indeed, thirty-six per cent of retirees stated that they did not celebrate or mark their retirement with anything special. Needless to say, there was no reason to search for ideas for retirement parties for these individuals.

The absence of a retirement celebration is partially explained by the 40 percent of retirees who report they have continued to work in some retirement job after retiring. Jobs during retirement are pursued for a variety of reasons.

The majority of retirees, however, did celebrate with company retirement parties (31 percent), retirement parties thrown by family or friends (18 percent), taking a special trip or vacation (14 percent) or starting a new hobby (12 percent).

Ideas for Retirement Parties

Here are some tips and ideas for retirement parties including what to do and what not to do when throwing a retirement party.

#1 of Top-Ten Retirement Party Ideas and Tips

Have a master of ceromonies give a main speech, which highlights the retiree's accomplishment, interests, hobbies, and passions.

#2 of Top-Ten Retirement Party Ideas and Tips

Have various co-workers and friends talk about the good times that were enjoyed with the retiree at work and away from work. Someone can create a funny retirement poem as well.

#3 of Top-Ten Retirement Party Ideas and Tips

The retiree will, of course, make a retirement speech based on what and how much he or she wants to say.

#4 of Top-Ten Retirement Party Ideas and Tips

Plan a series of retirement toasts and retirment sentiments by various friends and co-workers so that each can tell the retiree what he or she did that was exceptionally memorable.

#5 of Top-Ten Retirement Party Ideas and Tips

Have a guest book available for people who come to the party to sign. Encourage these people to write personalized retirement sentiments or retirement wishes.

#6 of Top-Ten Retirement Party Ideas and Tips

Give the retiree a special gift. The World's Best Retirement Book by Ernie J. Zelinski is a great retirement gift idea, whether it is for a teacher retirement party, a principal retirement party, or a police retirement party.

Jonathan Chevreau, retirement columnist with the National Post had this to say about The World's Best Retirement Gift: "To be sure, retirement books are a glutted field, but most focus on money and financial planning. They view the finish line as the last day of employment. That’s where Ernie Zelinski’s [ How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free] begins."

#7 of Top-Ten Retirement Party Ideas and Tips

Invite a surprise guest: He or she can be a former co-worker or a former boss who retired some time ago..

#8 of Top-Ten Retirement Party Ideas and Tips

Ensure that you have one or more or the guest take a lot of photos of the retirement party that are given to the retiree.

#9 of Top-Ten Retirement Party Ideas and Tips

Have a display at the retirement party with souvenirs that highlight the retiree's life and accomplishments at work.

#10 of Top-Ten Retirement Party Ideas and Tips

Remember that the ultimate goal for having a retirement party for the retiring employee is to have the employee and the attendees enjoy themselves in a fun and relaxing atmosphere.

Ideas for Retirement Parties Image

Quotes about Parties to Put Retirement

Parties in Proper Perspective

We give lovely parties that last through the night,
I dress as a woman and scream with delight,
We wake up at lunch time and find we're still tight.
What could be duller than that?
- Noël Coward (writing about parties)

After all, what is your host's purpose in having a party? Surely not for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.
- P.J. O'Rourke

About beauty as well.
Whenever, at a party, I have been in the mood to study fools, I have always looked for a great beauty: they always gather round her like flies around a fruit stall.
- Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825), German novelist. Hesperus, ch. 21 (1795).

Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly.
- Desiderius Erasmus

Conversation did not flow with the drink; it drowned in it.
-Quentin Crisp

Drink, and dance and laugh and lie,
Love the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)
- Dorothy Parker (writing about parties)

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824), English poet. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, cto. 3, st. 22.

I had rather munch a crust of brown bread and an onion in a corner, without any more ado or ceremony, than feed upon turkey at another man's table, where one is fain to sit mincing and chewing his meat an hour together, drink little, be always wiping his fingers and his chops, and never dare to cough nor sneeze, though he has never so much a mind to it, nor do a many things which a body may do freely by one's self.
- Miguel de Cervantes (Speaking about dinner parties, if not retirement parties)

In dinner talk it is perhaps allowable to fling any faggot rather than let the fire go out.
- J. M. Barrie

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we should dance.
- Unknown wise person

The formal Washington dinner party has all the spontaneity of a Japanese imperial funeral.
- Simon Hoggart

And thus they give the time, that Nature meant
For peaceful sleep and meditative snores,
To ceaseless din and mindless merriment
And waste of shoes and floors.
- Lewis Carroll (writing about dinner parties)

Like other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogethery, then inarticulate, and then drunk. When we had reached the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down again without stumbling.
- Lord Byron (1788-1824), English poet. Letter, 31 Oct. 1815, to poet Thomas Moore (published in Byron's Letters and Journals, vol. 4, ed. by Leslie A. Marchand, 1975).