An At Home Anniversary Celebration

When we started planning our wedding, my mom advocated hard for us to get married in my home state of California. Although California weather sure would have been nice on our our wedding day, I'm thankful now, more than ever, that we stuck to our guns to get married where we live here in Kansas City. {& I'll tell you why in a minute} I honestly cannot believe that next Monday we'll be celebrating our first year of marriage...it really does feel like it was just a few months ago we said I do. I also can't believe that we'll be celebrating in quarantine...though ours is certainly not the only celebration that looks much different than we planned or expected (p.s. my heart is with all the brides right now planning and/or postponing weddings!) I'd be lying to you guys if I told you it's no big deal.

I'm a celebration kind of girl. I love to throw parties, plan big surprises, and use life milestones as the perfect reason to do something I/we may not do otherwise. On our honeymoon, B & I promised to take a trip every year for our anniversary. For me personally, I'd much rather take a trip together and make new memories in new places than exchange gifts because a) we only need so much stuff b) after 6 years together, you start to run out of fun gift ideas and anniversary gifts should be fun I think...not something you "need" and c) I'm all about experiences and adventures! I think they're far more valuable! With that in mind, I had booked us flights to Charleston for this weekend to celebrate and although it may not be an international adventure like our Italian honeymoon was, it is a city neither of us have been and would be a new place to explore. Unfortunately, about 3 weeks after I booked our flights, COVID-19 hit hard and fast and as we all now know, the country is all but shut down currently. So for now, like so many others, we are doing our best to pivot, and throw ourselves a quarantine style first wedding anniversary celebration and I thought I'd share our plans with you all in case you also find yourself trying to creatively celebrate your own milestones at home!

How to Celebrate Your Wedding Anniversary at Home:

In 5 Easy Steps

1. Either defrost your wedding cake top tier (if you chose to go that route) OR call up the bakery who made your wedding cake and order a small 4" or 6" for just the two of you to share! I am so happy I can lean on some of the amazing vendors from our wedding to help us recreate and/or celebrate our anniversary at home. If your vendors aren't local, call up a bakery and order something that sounds delish! It's a celebration and celebrations mean special treats!!

2. If a local restaurant catered your wedding (& if you loved the food of course) call them up and pace an order for take-out or delivery! You can either order something similar to what you had on your wedding day or something different entirely but splurge a little, just because you're at home doesn't mean you can't make it special. If you can't order out from your caterer, pick one of your favorite local restaurants and order from there.

3. Break out your wedding video and/or wedding album. Believe it or not, B and I STILL have not watched the full length video from our wedding day, we've seen the amazing highlights reel of course but I thought our anniversary would be the perfect time to sit and watch it! In researching ideas for at home celebrations, one post said some couples make it an annual tradition to watch their wedding film (if you have one) which I think could be really fun as well, especially if you start adding kiddos into the mix. I don't know if we'll watch ours every year but I think revisiting it every 5 or so could be really fun!

4. Traditionally the first wedding anniversary is the "paper" anniversary. In other words, your gifts to one another should be in the form of paper. {Hence the airplane tickets} If you want to go sans gifting, be sure to at least change cards but other at home and affordable options are gift certificates, tickets for an event at a later date, or a fun subscription box for your spouse to enjoy!

5. GET DRESSED UP! Yes I know you're at home but if you weren't would you really be wearing your sweatpants or leggings to dinner? I think not! We've all heard the saying, "you get out of it what you put into it" and that goes for just about anything. If you want to make your anniversary feel special and memorable, even if it's just a night at home, be sure to put a little oomph into it and you're bound to have a wonderful evening!