Home Outreach Leaders Articles for Outreach & Missions 30 Unique Ways to Celebrate Your Anniversary

30 Unique Ways to Celebrate Your Anniversary

celebrate your anniversary

Every year of marriage is something to celebrate. Here are 30 unique ways to celebrate your anniversary. Hopefully you’ll find some unique ideas to help you celebrate your anniversary this year.

Sometime last year, one of my marriage ministry teammates celebrated her third wedding anniversary. When I asked her what are doing to celebrate your anniversary, she shared with me something she and her husband started doing on their first anniversary two years prior.

Their first anniversary fell in the middle of a Dallas ice storm. Whenever we get any bad weather in Dallas, the city shuts down. Instead of getting to go out on the town for a great meal, they were stuck in their apartment with a frozen pizza. They celebrated their first anniversary with a frozen pizza and conversation on their apartment floor. They put phones away and just caught up on the ups and downs of their first year of marriage. When year two came around, even though they weren’t trapped at home by an ice storm, they decided to celebrate their anniversary with a frozen pizza, no cell phones, and a recap of year two.

Their annual anniversary plans got me thinking. If you’re a married couple, you want to celebrate your anniversary in a fun and memorable way. I know I can learn from others and steal some of their ideas. So, I asked on the Facebooks for some of my friends to share their anniversary plans and traditions. This post includes a collection of 30 of the best ideas so that you can steal or borrow to celebrate your anniversary. I wrote most of these from the first person point of view from the individual who submitted the suggestion. In no particular order…

30 Ways to Celebrate Your Anniversary

1. “My favorite anniversary tradition is that we get away somewhere special to us for the night/a few nights. On the date of our anniversary, my husband reads the story of Jesus washing His disciple’s feet from John 13. He prays and then washes my feet as his vow to continue forward in our marriage with humility and servanthood. He has done this since night one of us being married and every year on our anniversary we remind ourselves of the importance of serving one another.”

2. “We watch our wedding video together and dance to our first dance song in our living room.”

Side Note from Scott: Share below your first dance song from your wedding. I’ll pick a winner from the comments below to win a free copy of my new book Ready Or Knot?. I’ll go first: our song was It’s Your Love by Tim McGraw and Faith Hill.

3. “This isn’t for our anniversary but something we do for Valentine’s Day. Instead of going out and spending a lot of money at a nice restaurant, we buy fresh ingredients and make pizza at home. And, of course, we make chocolate-covered strawberries. We look forward to our homemade pizza night every year!”

4.  “We get a fancy piece of cake, watch our wedding video, and look through our wedding photo album!”

5. “We alternate who plans our anniversary celebration. The wife plans the even years and the husband is responsible for the odd years.”

6. “We always do a getaway for our anniversary. It’s ranged from a weekend at the beach to a night in a hotel in town. This has become more challenging with young kids, but it’s so important for us to get together time and celebrate!”

7. “We’ve been married for 45 years, and we always listen to the audio of our ceremony.”

Side Note From Scott: First of all, how cool that this couple has been married 45 years? And it’s hard for me to believe that video didn’t always exist and this couple has to listen to the audio! I guess we shouldn’t talk—we were the first DVD customer for our photographer/videographer. We just got out of the VHS era!

Along these lines, another couple said, “We watch our wedding video with our kids and listen to their hilarious observations! It’s good for your kids to know you existed before them!”

Regardless, many couples re-watch their ceremony annually on their anniversary. I love this idea. We did it a few times but have gotten away from it in recent years.

8. “We reread our wedding vows. We had our vows printed on canvas with our wedding date on it, and we keep it posted in our home.”

Side Note From Scott: YES! We need to be reminded of what we committed to and what God calls us to in marriage. Every time I officiate a wedding, I remind guests to listen to the vows the bride and groom share so they can be reminded of their own vows and commitment.

9. This one is my personal favorite. Two friends of mine have been married over 35 years. Because they believe their marriage is too important to officially celebrate just one time/year, they celebrate months, not years, married. At the time of this writing, my friends recently celebrated their 38th year  456th month of marriage. Let’s give it up for my friends!