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" &amp;quot;No Diggity,&amp;quot; the &amp;#039;90s jam by Blackstreet, pours out of the speakers at New York City&amp;#039;s Bob Bar, where Leela Hatfield, 27, and her best friend, Alie Martell, 27, are throwing a party. Nostalgia is already in the air: The pair are wearing custom-made tank tops re-creating their childhood Best Friends charm necklaces and handing out stickers emblazoned with their smiling faces and a special hashtag: #Since1993. Their guests shower them with gifts (they thought about registering but thought that would be greedy) and cards \u2014 one starring two poodles and a message reading, &amp;quot;Happy Anniversary, you two amazing bitches!&amp;quot; Welcome to Alie and Leela&amp;#039;s 20-year friendiversary party, a giggle- and gin-infused affair marking two decades since Martell showed up as the new girl at Hatfield&amp;#039;s elementary school, bonded with her over a shared love of Easy Bake Ovens, and became her sister from another mister. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve been best friends with Alie for almost my entire life, and it&amp;#039;s a big deal,&amp;quot; Hatfield says. &amp;quot;Friendship milestones are usually overlooked, but we wanted to celebrate our anniversary and share it with all our friends.&amp;quot; Martell, who&amp;#039;s the managing editor at Cosmopolitan.com, agrees: &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re used to people posting their anniversary flowers on Facebook, but it feels like more of an achievement to celebrate having been friends for so long.&amp;quot; With more women getting married later in life (the average age of a first-time bride in the U.S. has crept up from 25 to around 27) and a longer stretch of our lives consumed with roommate bonding and seeing each other through breakups and new jobs, girlfriends are closer than ever. For the new breed of Tina-and-Amy-tight besties, friendiversaries are a way to acknowledge their true partners in life \u2014 their BFFs. Friendiversary Fever &amp;quot;The idea of celebrating your friendship has grown steadily,&amp;quot; says Jan Yager, PhD, author of Friendshifts: The Power of Friendship and How It Shapes Our Lives. Considering the high divorce rate, she notes, romantic anniversaries seem dicier, while the number of friendship greeting cards at drugstores has blown up over the last several years. Fox&amp;#039;s New Girl helped spark the trend when Schmidt and Nick feted their 10-year friendiversary with a lavish garden party in season two. Now #Friendiversary is a familiar presence on Twitter, with tweets shouting out photo albums and dinners. Chavie Lieber, 24, a writer, recently hosted four former coworkers-turned-besties for a mimosa-soaked three-year-friendiversary brunch at her New York apartment. The group, which calls itself The Assistants Club, began bonding over &amp;quot;bitch work&amp;quot; three years ago, and although they&amp;#039;ve all moved on to new (and more senior) jobs, they&amp;#039;re closer than ever. &amp;quot;We feel it&amp;#039;s important to mark the time that we became friends,&amp;quot; says Nora Barak, 26, a social media editor. &amp;quot;Not to be so Carrie Bradshaw, but we&amp;#039;re all 20something women trying to make it big and we&amp;#039;re all supporting each other.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t have a boy to celebrate an anniversary with, so I&amp;#039;m very happy to be celebrating my friendiversary,&amp;quot; says Annie Wermiel, 25, a photographer. But even her friend Beryl Shereshewsky, 28, a freelance video producer who just celebrated her two-year anniversary with her boyfriend, confesses: &amp;quot;I was way more excited waking up this morning for our friendiversary. I literally waited in line to buy fancy juices for mimosas for 30 minutes. I would never do that for my boyfriend!&amp;quot; BFF-Dom in the Digital Age It may seem ironic that friendiversaries are cropping up at a time when we&amp;#039;re more likely to Gchat our friends than call them and long-standing dinner plans are routinely broken via last-minute texts. But when friends do keep it together, it&amp;#039;s all the more reason to throw a party. &amp;quot;Some friends, rather than tell me personally that they&amp;#039;re not going to make it to my birthday party, just send a quick Facebook message,&amp;quot; says Kelly Thom, 30. But her BFF Libby Piller, 31, never flakes via text. The inseparable pair toasted each other with bourbon and &amp;quot;strong chick music,&amp;quot; like Miranda Lambert, at the stroke of midnight at their one-year friendiversary bash at an Oshkosh, Wisconsin, bar last November. &amp;quot;Libby and I both trust that the other person will be there when it&amp;#039;s important.&amp;quot; Separated by a two-hour drive in northern England, British fashion blogger Annie Moss, 29, and her best friend from college, Jodi Kelly, 28, keep in touch through Twitter \u2014 but meeting for a 10-year friendiversary weekend in London last October was the perfect way to catch up in the flesh over gossip and French martinis. Ten years earlier, they clicked over a shared passion for fashion. When they showed up to London&amp;#039;s Dirty Martini bar, &amp;quot;OMGs&amp;quot; rang out as they realized they were both wearing wild statement pants and nude pumps. &amp;quot;When you have a friend who you haven&amp;#039;t spoken to in months and the conversation just picks up where it left off, it really is something to celebrate,&amp;quot; Moss says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s respecting that some friendships don&amp;#039;t always last, but with Jodi, I&amp;#039;ve got a best friend for life.&amp;quot; Back in New York, the morning after Hatfield and Martell&amp;#039;s 20th friendiversary, the duo (who live together, natch) were already contemplating their 30th friendiversary party. &amp;quot;People come and go,&amp;quot; Hatfield says. &amp;quot;Alie&amp;#039;s forever.&amp;quot; Photo credit: Kathleen Kamphausen Related: 40 Signs You&amp;#039;ve Been BFFs Forever  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/advice/a5559/happy-friend-anniversary/?click=rel>