My husband and I are approaching our paper anniversary this weekend and I, for one, am very excited. Throughout our decade long courtship, we would get each other what ever little gift caught our fancy to commemorate the day we started dating until the tedious strangeness of shopping without each other and the difficulty of keeping the gift a secret got the better of us and we just stopped buying gifts. We didn’t stop acknowledging the day, but around year six, it started feeling odd and immature to celebrate a day neither of us could fully remember, and which bore little significance to our lives. It wasn’t like we were celebrating a thoughtful commitment, we were celebrating the day that he ask me a “rhetorical question” and I said something like, “yeah, sure.” This is why I was very excited to start the anniversary counter back to zero when we got married. I continue to be excited for being able to choose a meaningful gift based on tradition instead of a useless gift based on my panicked ideas the day I realize our anniversary is tomorrow. I am determined to stick to the traditional gifts due at every marriage milestone, not only because I think it will be fun, but also because I get teary eyed thinking about exchanging gold with my beloved husband 49 years from now. Continue reading →