Celebrations, Wedding Belles

Wedding Anniversary Celebrations

Wes and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary yesterday. I can’t believe it! The past year (and especially this summer) has flown by, and all of a sudden we have graduated from being “newlyweds.” We made a pretty big deal out of celebrating this anniversary (we made it through some major milestones and trials this year!), and I am sharing so that others can steal ideas and maybe share some traditions of their own! 

  1. Anniversary Photos: Yes, we have plenty of gorgeous engagement and wedding photos of the two of us already. But we thought the occasion at hand was special enough to warrant new pictures. Ideally, I’d love to have nice photos done each year so that we always have updated portraits in our house and on our Christmas cards. And, we got to include our recently adopted love pup, Rufus, which was extra special! Emma Emery Photography did an amazing job, no? One Year Anniversary Photo Session - Fairly Southern
  2. Dinner out: This one is pretty standard as far as anniversaries go, I know. It felt quite special though since we rarely eat out on week nights. After a long Monday at work, it was exciting to look forward to a night out on the town.
  3. Renewing our vows: Like the anniversary photos, this is something that I hope will be a yearly tradition for us. We are lucky that we live in the same city that we were married in, which made it fairly easy to swing by our ceremony location after dinner to recite our wedding vows. Unfortunately the chapel itself was locked, so we stood outside the big front doors and read our vows to each other. Hearing the pledge that we wrote together last summer was incredibly touching.
  4. Exchanging gifts: Wes and I don’t really buy each other extravagant gifts, but we still wanted to give each other a little something to celebrate the occasion. He scored a t-shirt featuring lyrics from our first dance song as well as tickets to an NC State basketball game (aka the only thing I could come up with for the traditional “paper” gift). I adore my gift, which was a wooden sign painted with the words of 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. This verse is significant to us, as you will learn in number 7 below! Please excuse the poor lighting and mismatched furniture in the photo…we are in the process of moving 🙂1 Corinthians 13:4-8 Wooden Sign - Fairly Southern
  5. Watching our wedding video: Yet another yearly tradition in the making. We have the most incredible wedding video (shout out to Good Earth Films!), and it was really neat to relive the big day in sound and living color. I have said over and over again how quickly the past year has flown, but watching ourselves and our loved ones on film also made me pause and realize how much has changed over the course of a year!
  6. Eating the top tier of our wedding cake: The icing on the cake of our anniversary celebration was getting to eat the 1-year-old top tier of our wedding cake. Or rather, Wes ate the cake, and I had a few bites of frosting due to my recently developed gluten intolerance. The day before our anniversary, we took the cake out of the freezer, unwrapped it, and sat it in the fridge to thaw. Was it still delicious? I didn’t get to taste it in all of its glory, but Wes certainly seemed to enjoy it!
  7. A new verse: Yep, another yearly tradition (how am I going to remember all of these??). During premarital counseling, our pastor challenged Wes and I to choose a “theme” Bible verse for our first year of marriage. We decided we would focus on a different piece of 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 each year for our first several years of marriage. Love was indeed patient this past year (we reflected on this on our drive to dinner!), and starting yesterday we moved on to the next part of the verse: the infamous “love is kind.”
  8. Anniversary trip: I guess it’s a stretch to call this an “anniversary” trip given that it is taking place nearly three months after our anniversary, but stretch we will. We are headed to Asheville for a long weekend, and I am beyond excited to FINALLY see the Biltmore (and it will be decorated for Christmas)!

So there you have it! Our one year anniversary celebrations in list form. I’d love to hear from y’all about favorite anniversary celebrations you’ve had or any traditions you keep each year. Comment or drop me a note!

And to my sweet Wes: Happy one year, hubs. I love you more and more each day.

xoxo Laura

3 comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.