Berry College will welcome nearly 8,000 alumni, students, parents, faculty, staff and friends to Mount Berry this weekend for the annual Mountain Day celebration.

The festivities begin Friday and continue through Saturday night for the annual celebration of Martha Berry’s birthday.

Friday’s events include the Mountain Day Golf Scramble, benefiting Berry’s student golf team, and the annual student competitions in the Mountain Day Olympics. Students will also show off their dramatic talents in a theater production of “Moonlight and Magnolias” at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Saturday’s celebration begins with a 5K Run and 2-Mile Health Walk, followed by the Mountain Day Convocation Service at 10:30 a.m. in Frost Chapel. The featured speaker is Laura Sutton, who graduated magna cum laude with degrees in management and marketing from Berry in May 2009. Sutton served as the Student Government Association president and a freshman mentor while a student at Berry. She earned her master’s degree in education from Vanderbilt University in May and currently works as a human capital analyst for Deloitte Consulting in Atlanta.

The convocation will be followed by Berry’s traditional picnic at 11:30 a.m. The Grand March, one of the main events of the day, will begin at 1 p.m. and will include family fun activities such as live music, snow cones, inflatables and games. Berry’s Old Mill will provide freshly ground corn for purchase. Other weekend highlights include intercollegiate soccer and volleyball games.

The Berry College Mountain Day Wind Ensemble will celebrate with a montage of music during the events on Saturday.

“Berry graduates from 10 to 30 years ago will come by after we’ve finished playing to tell us their experiences when they were in band and played for Mountain Day,” said senior music major Rachel Imes. “It’s really a great experience to be a part of such an amazing tradition.”

Traffic is expected to be heavy, so visitors should plan to arrive early and allow sufficient time to drive or ride a shuttle to the Mountain Campus. More information, including traffic details, is available at www.berry.edu/alumni.

For those who cannot attend the event in person, Virtual Mountain Day — www.berry.edu/vmtnday — will begin at 1 p.m. Saturday with streaming video of the Grand March live and live chat will be accessible to anyone with a Twitter account. Include the hashtag “#mtnday11” in the body of your tweet and your comments will appear in the chat box adjacent to the video screen.