One Year: What We Did, What We Gave

About a month ago, Mitch and I celebrated our one year anniversary of marriage. Hooray! It truly is crazy how fast time moves along… one year already?! I know we’re checking in kind of late to the one year party (the actual day was Sept. 21st), but better late than never. In honor of the milestone, the blog will be diving into… wedding week!This week, we’ll cover:

• What we did and gave each other to celebrate one year
• The Big Day overview- how it all went down
• How I asked the Bridesmaids
• The Details, Details, Details…
• Honeymoon!

Sooo… let’s get right to it. Before we enjoy a blast from the past and take you through an overview of the day, I figured we’d start with the present. Our anniversary is September 21st and while we definitely made an effort to do something special, we kept the partying casual and low-key (which is kind of our style anyway). It was kind of tempting to merge our vacation, which happened earlier in September (see posts about that here, here, and here), with our anniversary because they were so close together this year, but we wanted to keep them separate and enjoy each in their own time and space. Really, we just wanted two “parties”. Like if your birthday is close to a holiday and people try and kill two birds with one stone by getting you a “this is your birthday and Christmas” gift… totally sympathizing with those of you out there. 🙂We actually spread out the festivities over some time (not totally on purpose), with the last of them happening this past weekend even! Awhile back, we had decided to adopt a practice that we learned from our cousins (they made an “appearance” here and here and have since had their healthy baby girl!!!) regarding anniversaries. Essentially, we trade off planning the celebration each year. So every year, one of us chooses and plans (and surprises) the other with what we’re doing. It was really fun and added an element of anticipation to everything. We’re thinking this will also force help us to put some thought into commemorating each milestone instead of just having to hastily decide on a restaurant to eat at last minute. That’s the hope, at least.This year was Mitch’s year. He had the day all planned out for quite some time before we actually went (which makes me want to start planning mine now…) and the only info I was privy to was this: We’re doing something in Lancaster. Ok, cool- I love Lancaster! As soon as I knew that, I immediately requested that we start our day at the infamous Shady Maple Smorgasbord for breakfast.If you live in the area and haven’t been for a breakfast, you.are.missing.out. I wholeheartedly expect their waffles to be an everyday menu item when I get to heaven. God and I have spoken about this. Needless to say, Mitch did not need much convincing as Shady is a fan favorite in our house, so that’s where we started our adventure. And of course, outside Shady they were selling mini pumpkins so I HAD to get few…And THEN we were on our way. Mitch took us to Pottery Works- one of those places that you can paint your own pottery and then they fire it for you and you get to take it home. Neither of us had ever done it before, so it was a great surprise!We worked together to make one thing that we could display in our house to remind us of the last year. Here’s the semi- before picture: And all finished and ready for firing…Such fun! After that, we headed back in the direction of home, only stopping for… MORE PUMPKINS!We worked together to pick the best ones, but I’ll hand it to him- Mitch did most of the heavy lifting……while I managed quality control.It was an awesome day- totally relaxing and carefree. Best kind of way to celebrate one year if you ask me. 🙂 We finished off the night with a trip to the grocery store (romantic, eh?) to get some things to make a surf and turf dinner at home (better, huh?). I won’t subject you to the obligatory picture of our food (I did take one, of course), but it was yummy. The night even ended with a surprise question in the mail… and I SAID YES!I get to be a bridesmaid in my brother’s wedding next summer- HOORAY! Great day, great company, great adventures. But what about gifts?? I know that’s what you’re thinking. At first, we thought about doing no gifts this year, just going on an adventure together. Then we toyed with the idea of getting something bigger for the house as a joint gift. However, that would be more exciting to me than to Mitch and we wanted it to be mutual. So, this year we gifted ourselves/each other with……memberships to the YMCA! Hysterical, I know, but we have already used it TONS of times and are loving it. So that’s that in terms of gifts.

The other thing we did was meet up with a good friend of ours (you can call her Ally) to get some pictures taken. She did a great job and we had a lot of fun traipsing through Valley Forge National Historic Park. We had a minor run in with the law park ranger, but other than that, it was an easy going day! Here are a few favorites from the shoot.Want to see the rest of the photos from that day? Check them out here. On a similar “housekeeping” note, the blog has gone through some restructuring. We’ve taken down the “Galleries” page, but replaced it with something a bit more interesting and helpful if you’re trying to get to know us better. Visit the new “Our Story” page for a run down of all of the major events that have made up, well, our life. You can still access various galleries of photos via that page- it just looks a little different. And is now more complete. In addition to the Engagement shoot from way back when, we’ve added the wedding (coming soon!), vacation, and our first year shoot. Happy browsing!

So there you have it- One Year and lots to celebrate! Speaking of celebrating, stay tuned for the a post all about THEBIGDAY coming tomorrow… oooh, the suspense. 🙂