Celebrating On A Budget
by LadyJade

A wedding anniversary is always a special occasion, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve been married for two years or twenty-two years, each couple wants to celebrate in a big way. Some couples run into a dilemma, especially those who are celebrating the first important few years of marriage - money! Planning a wedding anniversary celebration on a budget is quite common, but, for some husbands or wives who want to let their spouse know how much they care, it can be depressing when working from a limited budget.

A friend of mine went through just that and she admitted it wasn’t easy, but she made the most of it. My friend is a schoolteacher and met her husband in college where her husband was studying to be a physical therapist. The first ten years of their marriage, the family relied on one income…hers. Even though my friend carried the weight of household responsibilities and had very little money to celebrate with, she managed. Her husband opened his very own practice, and the couple celebrated their twenty-year wedding anniversary last year. Her husband put on the party including an exotic trip for two to Fiji afterwards.

My friend reminisced about the quirky things they did to celebrate their previous wedding anniversaries and as I listened to her stories, they were beautiful pieces of history that will be focal points in the future when their children plan for their fiftieth wedding anniversary. I hope I can attend that one too!

Homemade gifts are sometimes the biggest way to show how deep your love really is!

Many couples, including my friend and her husband, opt to give each other homemade gifts when there is practically no budget in sight. There are a lot of homemade gifts you too can make on your own, even if you’re not a crafty person.

Special homemade cards can say 'I love you' better than any store bought creation because the words that dance across the surface, come from deep within your own heart. You don’t have to be a poet to tell someone how much you care.

A weekend wedding anniversary trip doesn’t have to be an exotic vacation to Fiji to be memorable either. My friend laughed about their first wedding anniversary as she recalled how they pitched a tent at a state park, swam, roasted marshmallows, and had a really good time. She said the funniest thing about it was that the entire trip, including gas, food, and the camping fee, set them back just twenty bucks! They even borrowed the tent.

Diamonds aren’t the only form of jewelry that shows how much you appreciate the person you married. My own husband pulled a good one on me because I often joked about how I wanted one of those frilly anniversary diamond rings with a matching pendant. My husband went to the craft store and picked out everything he would need to make me the prettiest necklace I’ve ever owned using simple craft store beads. He put a lot of time and effort into it, but the kicker was his explanation of the colors he chose. The blue beads represented my eyes, the brown represented his, the red represented the hot love we share, and so on. I’ve never asked for a big frilly anniversary diamond since.

Romantic dinners don’t have to be a full course venue featuring veal and caviar to be romantic. A librarian once told me how she and her husband had a candlelight pizza dinner because she burned her intended anniversary cuisine.

Sometimes our plans don’t go as planned and that’s okay. What’s important is that couples love one another enough to giggle about the ups and downs throughout marriage. A wedding anniversary celebration shouldn’t be a stressful event. Concentrate on celebrating the love you share for one another, and your wedding anniversary celebration will be a bigger success than you ever could have imagined -- so much so that you’ll remember it your entire lifetime.