It’s so important to celebrate your love. I’ll always advocate for lots of date nights and alone time but the anniversary is my favorite day to make a big deal. This day x years ago, you devoted your lives to each other. You became one. It’s worth getting excited about!

For most of our anniversaries, we’ve adopted the gifts by year tradition. It’s fun to essentially be given a theme an try to figure out a gift that not only fits the theme but your partner will enjoy! To help you come up with ideas (and because I love talking about it!), I thought it might be fun to share what we’ve done up to this point!

For our first anniversary, we mostly focused on the getaway. We went to a beautiful bed and breakfast near New Hope, Pennsylvania. We exchanged cards, which is paper, but we hadn’t quite gotten into our tradition yet. There ought to be getaway ideas by year too! Mexico for year one, the Bahamas for year five, what do you think?!

As an early anniversary gift during our second year, I got a cocker spaniel puppy. I was having trouble naming her and that’s when we had the idea of looking up the anniversary gifts by year. Upon seeing that the second year is cotton, her name became Cotton! It was really fitting since she was the color of freshly picked cotton and she was a little fluff ball. Clothing would be an easy fit for this year but that seems so boring and from what I hear, lots of guys aren’t great at picking out clothes for their ladies! My husband has pretty good taste in clothes but I’m still a very big fan of this puppy six years later!

I distinctly remember a discussion about the third year theme but we ended up skipping it. Leather jackets, leather pants, purses, even risque items for alone time are cool options for the third anniversary. I think that engraved leather is a really gorgeous idea!

Our fourth anniversary was a total surprise. I was rushing home from an appointment to catch our oldest on the bus an the front door was wide open with no car in the driveway. Inside was a Soda Stream with accessories, plus a bouquet of flowers. It turns out my husband had parked at the house across from us after putting my appliance and flower gifts inside the house. The Soda Stream was awesome, the flowers were lovely, and I especially loved that he incorporated both the traditional and modern themes.

The dog name idea returned when I wanted a puppy five months before our anniversary. Given the size of a gift like this, he said we’d call it a birthday/Christmas/anniversary combination gift. We’d had a Disney name already (our kitty, Mickey) so with the wood theme of the fifth year coupled with Disney, Woody seemed a perfect fit for this Yorkshire terrier. This was the year that I finally joined in on the themed gift giving. My husband mentioned a desire to to start collecting chess sets and teaching our kids how to play chess so I found a customized wooden chess set. On it, I had engraved “I love you” and our wedding date.

Candy and iron seemed like a tough year for number six. While candy was easily a regular gift for us, iron seemed impossible. If he got me an actual iron, I probably would have hit him over the head with it. For both of us, it was difficult to think of anything decent that was made of iron. Since he loves to cook, especially on the grill, I got him a cast iron skillet that was meant to produce grill-like results for indoor cooking. He got me an iron horseshoe shaped like a heart with our names and date etched into it. I absolutely love it and I really want an aged piece of wood to put it on and display it on my wall for a nice rustic look!

The seven year anniversary might have been my favorite for both of us so far! I knew he had been looking for a nice cross necklace and I came upon one that looked like copper nails. He totally adored it and said it was the best gift I’d given him! For me, he ordered our song printed in a heart shape on a copper canvas. It’s made for such a pretty decoration! Before he settled on the song, he actually picked up a copper dipped rose also.

This year has been tough. Actually, I’ve found it next to impossible to buy anything other than something random with an engraving. The eighth year, bronze, isn’t great for jewelry because you can’t really get it wet without ruining it or turning your skin green. I’ve seen some beautiful carvings and personalized gifts but I think this year will take a lot of research for people! Thank heavens for Etsy!

I can’t go further on a personal level since today is our eight year anniversary but I wanted to share the list of anniversary themes by year for everyone in case you might want to join in with this fun tradition. Happy anniversary and happy gifting!

What’s been your favorite anniversary gift to give or receive?