1st anniversary ideas

raqlima

DH and I are getting ready to celebrate our first anniversary. We decided not give each other any gifts as we are saving up for a trip to Europe in a couple of months. The trip is our gift to each other. That's all fine, but I would like to make something special for our anniversary (on the actual day or nearby weekend). Any suggestions? Dinner at home or at a nice restaurant doesn't seem special enough. I wanted to do something different, creative, memorable. How did you guys celebrate for first anniversary?

Dragonfly_Bride

We were in the same situation, we had an "anniversary" trip planned to Paris a couple months after out actual anniversary. I think we just went to dinner at Shadowbrook in Capitola. It's a little overrated, but I like it: http://www.shadowbrook-capitola.com/home/home.php

Roni.Cedra

We went to a restaurant for dinner and DH got me a painting (paper) and I got him tickets to a comedy show. 

We love food, and tend to frame the menus from important restaurants that we have gone... where we went for our engagement, Brian's 30th b'day, etc. So I am working on creating our wedding menu to frame. Don't know if that would be 'cool' for you but for us it is!

You could do a scavenger hunt with paper clues to something romantic... either you... or dinner. I am hungry, can't you tell??

Good luck! 

raqlima

Funny you mention a scavenger hunt. We did our first 2 scavenger hunts in the past month. We did the "race for the ring" and the "hunt the grid", both on bikes around Sacramento. It was a lot of fun.

sm23

We went to Yosemite and to a nice dinner. In keeping with the "paper" tradition, he got me cash    because I really wanted to stock up on some new clothes (that was such a fun shopping trip) and I got him a gift certificate to a fly fishing store to get a lesson which is something he's always wanted to do.

If you wanted something inexpensive, creative and kind of keeping with the paper theme (and the travel theme), check out this crafty project.

hannikan

For the paper part of our 1st anniversary I wrote 30 reasons I love him on 30 pieces of paper (because he was 30 then). He gave me a photo album. We also took a trip that year so we just went out to dinner. This yr is our 5th anniversary and I have no idea what we'll do. We're moving a couple of weeks before it but then going on a cruise a couple of weeks later (with family though). So we'll probably just have dinner out somewhere. It's very rare for us to go out for dinner so it feels special to us. GL!

raqlima

I had totally forgotten about the whole "paper" thing! One thing we will be doing is opening our time capsule. We created a time capsule at our rehearsal dinner. There were colored coded 5x7 cards. Our family and friends wrote messages for us to read in the future. One color is to be opened on our first anniversary, another at the 5 year mark, another at 10, 15, and 25. Oh, we also wrote something to each other. I don't even remember what I wrote. Now I'm really excited and looking forward to opening the time capsule.

wldktz10

There's always Napa!

patty&nick

We went to see a play. The Rocky Horror Show at our local cabaret, to be exact. It was a blast.

I think we also had burgers beforehand. We're super classy. 

hersheykiss

Unfortunately DH was sick on our anniversary but I had our bakery do a small version of our wedding cake. I had planned to go to a very nice restaurant but because he was sick we ended up just going to Mimis, having dinner and cake. We left the cake at the restaurant so the rest of the staff could enjoy it (We were their best friends that night). While we were at dinner my BIL was at our house setting up his new printer. His present was a ream of paper to go with it (Paper being the traditional 1st year gift).

nikilynne

skydiving!  You can do it out of Lodi--it's not super expensive at all.