Tarjla Beleza nearly scared her friends when they received an invitation to her upcoming birthday that looked like a memorial card for a funeral.
The 31-year-old accountant from the northeastern Brazilian city of Teresina just wanted to create some excitement around her special date next month when the idea went viral.
“It was a night where I was doing absolutely nothing and talking to a friend who didn’t feel like partying this year,” Beleza told DailyMail.com. “I had seen similar models and decided to do it to see how my friends would react.”
Beleza searched the Internet for examples of cards that funeral homes make to hand out to guests at funerals and created an invitation for her birthday party on August 17.
The card had a blue background with a photo of her smiling with a flower on each side. Above her photo was the phrase ‘Celebration of Life’ and below that ‘2024’.
Brazilian accountant Tarjla Beleza shocked her friends when she sent out a birthday invitation to her upcoming party on August 14 that looked like a memorial card for a funeral. Some of her friends thought she had died, while others were quick to see the joke. She told DailyMail.com that the invitation is a cut above other invitations she has sent out in the past.
Tarjla Beleza told DailyMail.com that she came up with the idea for the birthday invitation after one of her friends told her she wasn’t in the mood to party. To create excitement, she made an invitation that looked like a memorial card for a funeral
Below her photo she added a dove on each side with a special message for her friends in Portuguese.
“Life is short. We are all here to live each day to the fullest as if it were our last,” she wrote. “And I did, and I will continue to do so. I come to invite you to celebrate my life on my thirty-second birthday of many to come.”
Beleza texted the invitation to her friends. The friend who wasn’t in the party mood burst out laughing, but her other friends feared the worst.
“At first they were scared, hahaha,” Beleza recalls. “They were afraid that something had happened to me, that I was really dead. Then they laughed at the invitation.”
Beleza doesn’t know yet what the theme of her party will be.
Tarjla Beleza during her 31st birthday party
“I say I want something very lively. But I’m waiting for some trolling from my friends about the party theme,” she said.
She has thought about putting out candles and flower arrangements and all her guests are wearing a blouse with her picture on it.
Or maybe she’ll opt for something more subtle.
“But I think it will just be a barbecue, something very simple,” Beleza said.