6 Creative Ways to Celebrate Your 2020 Graduate

It’s officially graduation season, but for many 2020 graduates, their celebrations aren’t turning out the way that they’d hoped. However, even if you’re unable to have an official ceremony or a big party, you can still make this time special for them.

With that in mind, below are six creative ways to celebrate your 2020 graduate. Feel free to use any of the ideas below to help celebrate your child’s big day.

1. Decorate to celebrate

Even though your graduate’s official ceremony may be canceled, there’s no rule against celebrating in your own home. Take the time to order plenty of graduation-themed decorations online. However, be aware that you’ll want to be sure to leave plenty of time to account for any shipping delays.

On the day that the ceremony was supposed to take place, go all out with your decorations. Hang banners around your home, strategically place other party decor items, get your graduate to wear their cap and gown. Then, make sure to take plenty of photos.

2. Plan a drive-by

By now, you’ve likely seen some drive-bys take place on social media. The gist is, however, that you coordinate with your graduate’s loved ones to have them all drive by your home at the same time, asking them to honk their horns and cheer as they do so.

When the honking starts, ask your graduate to go out and investigate. They’ll likely love seeing their family and friends coming together to celebrate their big accomplishment. Do your best to get the whole experience on video so that you can commemorate the experience for years to come.

3. Host a video chat party

If you’d rather have everyone be able to interact with your graduate, consider planning a video chat party. There are lots of video conferencing platforms out there to help bring your graduate’s closest friends together to celebrate.

As far as how to plan the party, start by sending out online invitations. Then, plan a few structured activities that the group can do together such as watching a graduation ceremony on YouTube or, in the case of a high school graduate, taking a virtual tour of the college campus that they’ll be attending in the fall.

Finally, think about having an online guestbook available. That way, the attendees can send their well wishes to the graduate and your loved one will have a special keepsake to help them remember the party after it’s over.

4. Create a video tribute

If you’re more technologically-inclined consider putting together a video tribute to help celebrate your graduate. Put out a call to family and friends asking them to send you a recorded video message for your child.

To make it easier, you may want to give everyone a prompt to follow. For example, you could have everyone share a favorite memory of time spent together with the graduate or share a piece of advice that they can offer for how to best move on to whatever the next stage may be.

Then, take the time to edit them all together. If you’d like you can also intersperse still photos from your graduate’s time at school or set the whole thing to music. However, you put it together, make sure to organize a special veiwing for on what would have been graduation day.

5. Put together a commemorative photo album

If scrapbooking is more your style than editing video, think about crafting a book for this event. Again you’ll want to take the time to gather photos from your graduate’s time at school and you may want to reach out to family and friends to provide messages of congratulations and support.

Believe it or not, like so many other things in the world today, scrapbooking has also gone online. There are many companies out there that will allow you to upload photos digitally and to format scrapbook pages on the computer. When you’re done, they’ll send you a printed and bound version of the book that you created.

6. Reschedule group celebrations for a later date

Lastly, there’s no rule saying that you have to celebrate your child’s graduation on or near their actual graduation day. If your graduate is the type of person who loves the idea of having a big party in their honor, then that’s what you should do. You may just have to push the celebration back to a later date.

In all honesty, booking and planning a party right now may be tricky; every state has its own unique guidelines for when and how they plan to reopen. However, if you’re willing to take a chance on picking a date, you may be able to score a deal with pricing, as many businesses who have been shut down are offering incentives to bring in customers.

That said, even if you’re not willing to take the risk of picking a definite date, you can always promise your graduate that you’ll start to plan a big party once things calm down a little. Just be sure that, if you go this route, you’re prepared to follow through when it’s time.