With the seventh anniversary of our wedding this past weekend, I was found myself wondering about gifts. Do you guys usually celebrate wedding anniversaries with gifts? Do you prefer to celebrate with a night out or a trip away? Does a "Happy Anniversary" with a kiss suffice??
We don't really exchange gifts on our anniversary. In fact, I don't know if I've ever received a gift to open on that occasion. But, the gift giver that I am, WE doesn't truly translate to I, and I do like to follow "tradition" and get creative and do something along the lines of the old fashioned traditional anniversary gifts when I can.
For instance:
On our first anniversary, for which the gift is paper, I made up a scrapbook album called "Our Marriage: memories of our life together."
It's an album (that I'm -par for the course- a few years behind on these days) that is just four or five pages of highlight and lowlights of our life each year. Where we live, what we're doing, major milestones, romantic getaways, memorable events, and how we spent our anniversary. (and it was supposed to include a pic of us every year in the same spot downtown Portland, but since we left the area after the first two years, that didn't happen)
It's my favorite album/journal.
So that was Year One: paper. Sure paper can be boring, but not when it's turned into something special!
The second wedding anniversary gift is cotton. Yeah, that sounds like fun, doesn't it? Well we thought about it and wanted to be practical, so we decided to purchase this chair I'd been wanting for awhile (the comfiest chair in the world, might I add) for our anniversary present to each other. Cotton? Check.
Third and forth anniversary, I don't know where my head was because I totally spaced this "tradition". I know on our forth anniversary we were moving and living in Michigan without our furniture?? So things were a little crazy those couple of years.
Fifth anniversary is wood and I made Ryan this wooden plaque...
Sixth anniversary is iron and I got Ryan a branding iron for his grill :)
And here we are on lucky number seven... the traditional gift is copper. I had a hard time with this one. First I kept thinking of a clock because he really wants one of those hanging station type clocks for the basement and I thought if I could find a copper one that would be perfect. Um, perfect if I were rich. I didn't realize how expensive copper was!! I looked at mirrors, I looked at water catching rain cascade spout thingies, I looked at wind chimes, and I just didn't want to spend that much money for something copper. Finally I had the idea to find a pool table light for him, probably one used off of Craigslist and just make it copper. You know, like spray paint any metal parts a dark bronze/copper color and call it good. He needs and wants a cool pool table light. However, since as usual, I'm horribly unlucky with Craigslist people who don't bother to return inquiries, I didn't find one in time.
At the last minute however, I found just the thing. An etsy artist who makes stamped copper keychains, pet tags, knick knacks and such. She is a self-proclaimed science geek and had these tags in her listings... a copper tag made up to look like the copper element from the periodic table (she had Silver one as a silver necklace charm too... I think it's so cute. Uh-oh. I hope being married to a science geek isn't rubbing off on me). Anyway, I convo'd with her and we came up with a personalized set of tags for Ryan for our anniversary with my inscription behind it and our date on it. How perfect is that?... for someone who names all his pets after the chemical elements to get a copper (Cu, atomic number 29, atomic weight 63.456) keychain for our "copper" anniversary?? I love it.
So what do you all do for Anniversaries? Diamonds? Flowers? Appliances? A regular day of kids and dishes?? Does anyone else ever look at the list of Traditional Anniversary Gifts, or I am the lone fuddy duddy??
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2 comments:
We usually do a nice dinner out - though our 10th is this year, so maybe we'll do something different?
I love that you kind of go by the chart - I think that's cool!
I have to share what my MIL did for our 1st anniversary. Since it's paper, she gave us a HUGE bag of paper plates/napkins for all different seasons (she bought them on clearance after each holiday for a year). So cute! I've continued the tradition with my siblings on their first anniversary (and then, of course, I don't get them anything for years after that).
Although we aren't married yet, and have only had one anniversary, we do like to celebrate any time of milestone or anniversary. I like to do it BIG... but he, on the other hand, doesn't think much about gifts. We do make a huge effort to spend the day doing a fun activity and end with a nice dinner out. Sometimes we'll do gifts.
I do like your originality in your gifts!! It shows that you take lots of time to think about it and it definitely makes the gift even better.
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