Our anniversary fell on a Thursday, and since we had already taken our big vacation for the year we kept things pretty low-key. We enjoyed a delicious dinner at Cakes and Ale in Decatur that evening.
We had a chilled bottle of pink Chandon waiting for us back at home, so we sipped on that while going through our wedding album. I love how certain photos can bring us right back to all the emotions throughout that day - nerves, excitement, and mostly just pure happiness. It was a pretty fantastic, long-awaited day.
I still have yet to make a photo album of our honeymoon pictures, but earlier this summer I did accomplish one craft that has also been on my to-do list for several years now. I am fairly sentimental and had saved all the cards and handwritten notes we received during our engagement and for our wedding, and I finally made a scrapbook out of them. It's nothing fancy, but I didn't really need much in the way of supplies since the cards were so pretty and decorative as-is. And it's definitely a much better way of storing all those lovely cards and handwritten messages than keeping them tucked away in a box at the top of my closet, never to be seen again. The scrapbook sits on a shelf right next to our wedding album and I have loved going through it over and over again. This was by far my favorite project, because I so enjoyed reading notes from friends and family members. Some were sweet, some made me laugh, and others made me cry (happy tears). Such a wonderful reminder that we are very blessed and loved by so many people.
In previous years, we've followed the traditional wedding anniversary gifts, but this year we failed. We just had a really difficult time coming up with something we truly wanted that was linen or silk. And we are a little too practical to get something just for the sake of it. So we said, forget it... maybe we'll have better luck with the traditional gift of wood next year for our fifth anniversary.
But we still decided to keep our own tradition of getting something for us (not for each other). Not quite linen or silk, we ended up getting a new bedding set that is just as soft :) We ordered it months in advance and it sat boxed up in another room while we waited until our actual anniversary to open it. Crazy right?! It was worth the wait, the only problem is that our bed is almost too comfortable now, and it's terribly difficult to get up in the morning. Once we got our new bedding, we ordered a painting to hang above the bed (along with two others for the living room). Sending a big thank you to Amy for the amazing recommendation! They are all custom paintings of our travel photos; this one I took on our trip last year to Venice. We absolutely love how the paintings turned out.
Four years have gone by really fast - as they say, time flies when you're having fun! :)
Our previous anniversary posts...
2nd Anniversary - 2011
3rd Anniversary - 2012
