It doesn't normally happen often in most games. Either the quest that you took was so paltry that it didn't deserve much more than a curt "Thank you" and a bag of gold to split amongst the party. In other cases, you're preventing the big bad baddie from doing their evil plan before most of the innocent townsfolk get a chance to be able to even know WHAT they were saved from, and rarely believe the heros if they decide to brag about it or ask for a reward.

But in some cases, the town or city know that they were saved! Either from a impending threat, or one that has made itself comfortable terrorizing the innocents of the game. Not only that, but they know that YOU were the ones to save them, and that they owe their lives to you and your group alone. Tell of a story of a time after any quest where you got to bask in the spot light of glory and celebrate a quest well completed.

In all of the groups we're in we've only saved a city in such a way that it actually deserved trowing a party...
And that one time we refused.

One of the player characters had sacrificed himself for the victory, and the whole group decided that it was no time for celebrating, but instead a time of mourning and sadness. It was a great honor, and we had a lot of fun role playing our tears, but we even asked the locals if they would please not party XD

My group almost did this, but one player had pulled the Deck Of Many Things card that makes an enemy, so the leader of the town hated us now. Oops...

My group almost did this, but one player had pulled the Deck Of Many Things card that makes an enemy, so the leader of the town hated us now. Oops...

So when one of my friends was running a PTU game we ended up accomplishing something so everyone had a party. My character decided to run a "Maid the RPG" game... it was silly since we basically just had everyone roll a die to see how well they did for that stretch of the game instead of actually pulling up the rules.

Played a wizard in a campaign where we had a tendency of getting chummy with all the townsfolk, then inevitably saving them from assassins, armies or whatever else threatened them. Usually several threats a town.

Suffice to say, it happened fairly frequently that there would be full-town celebrations in our honor. We usually decided to keep track of drunkenness through fortitude saves, and then keep going until we started failing them.

End result?

DM: "Okay, it's morning, and your wizard is unconscious on the ground."
Me: "No she's not."
DM: "She's not?"
Me: "She's on the roof."
DM: "Ooookay then."

So I'll tell my story, even if I'm not sure it counts.
We had spent three days straight in a lost dwarven hold, fighting Yuggoloth and all sort of horrors. We did save a city doing so, but choose to move out of it after getting paid to investigate a mass disappearance in the nearby country.
In the next city we got to, we found, on the first evening, a hidden tavern for feys and monsters where we had to find contacts. They invited us to drink before work, so the party choose to have our victory celebration there.
The druid insisted that my 16 years old wizard tried alcol for the first time.
The results:
Somehow the warforged barbarian got drunk and lost a drinking game (apparently magical alcol still works on them, since magical poisons do).
I walked straight to a red half-dragon warrior and asked him about the Chamber (secret dragon organization I want to work with, they have a bad rep for laying waste to entire cities if they think their secrets are exposed). He punched me in the face for massive damage and ran away.
The druid started a musical number with five were-rats she just met.
The swashbuckler had a bad trip after meeting a gang of changelings that wanted to pull a prank on us.
After waking from the punch, I crashed a private betting room where a monk and a barbarian where grappling on a ring, bragged a lot about defeating a Yuggoloth army (technically true), got so annoying that the public pushed me on stage, then won a fight since me, the DM, and my character all forgot how dimension door works (i tried to teleport my adversary out of the ring, forgetting that it works only on willing creatures. The DM also forgot and I won, later when we found out I couldn't have done it he ruled that my adversary choose to be willing since, having failed the will saving throw, i would have teleported off with her clothes).
Cue one "The Hangover" waking up moment and "I'll never, ever, ever drink again as long as i live"..
So, not in the spot light but best celebration I ever role-played.

Chug chug chug chug!

...that's all I got to say.