A wedding anniversary is a special time to celebrate your marriage on the day you made it official. Usually, my husband and I go out to dinner to celebrate ours. But on May 5th, 2020, our nineteenth wedding anniversary, we were quarantining with our daughters, which prompted me to think about all the ways we could celebrate at home.
We ended up with a fun, memorable night at home with our kids, recreating meaningful details of our wedding day from what we had around the house, or could order in short notice. It turned out to be so much fun that we realized, quarantine or not, sometimes a quiet night in is the best anniversary “party” there is.
Here are some ideas for how you can celebrate at home, too. Go big and do them all, or pick one or two that feel important to you.
Traditions
Weddings are so much about customs, whether they are family-made, cultural, religious, or just combinations of rituals you’ve come across over the years and want to incorporate. Here are some fun twists on tradition to try for your anniversary:
-Exchange “vows.” Dig out the ones from your wedding and read them to each other—or write entirely new ones making promises for the next 5, 10, or 19 years, or however far you want to look ahead!
-Then, exchange cards. Fill in our Anniversary Almanac for a one-of-a-kind message that makes your love headline news.
-Share something sweet. In some cultures, the couple drinks from a common cup of wine during the ceremony, and at many receptions in the US, the newlyweds feed each other cake. Pick a significant food or drink to share from the same glass or plate, as a symbol of all you’ve shared in the past and will share in the future.
-Sign on the dotted line. Whether it was a ketubah, a nikah, or a marriage license, chances are you signed some life-changing document on the day you got married. Draw up another one or write a letter to each other—it can be a sincere declaration of love, a promise for the next year, a joke, a bucket list, a limerick, or just a list of what you want to do together in the years to come—and sign it! Display it as inspiration or store it someplace safe to pull back out on your future anniversaries.
-Toss something! Did your wedding guests shower you with rose petals or rice? After a toast or a kiss, recreate the moment, or replace the rice with confetti—maybe even confetti you made with a printer, a hole punch, and scans of your wedding photos.
-Give the gift of tradition. You can exchange the customary gifts for every year—or you can use them as a theme for dinner. For the first anniversary, where the traditional gift is paper, you might make each other cards, wear paper crowns and tiaras to dinner, and print out paper flowers as decor. For the fifth anniversary, when the customary gift is wood, eat with bamboo utensils and wooden serving trays.
-Tell your love story. Everybody loves a good romance. Share the story of how you met and fell in love, or about the proposal, whether you’re reminiscing with each other or retelling the tale to your kids or Zoom “guests.”
The Decor
Color Palette:
For our at-home anniversary, I let the colors of the tables at our wedding inspire the white, green, and gold palette. Think about what colors you had at your wedding, whether you look to your invitation, the bridesmaids’ dresses, or the flowers. You can weave your color palette into everything from the paper napkins you use at dinner to the flowers—even to the envelope of your anniversary card to your spouse!
Flowers:
I set out pears and calla lilies, both of which were on the table on our wedding day. Then I worked in a last minute addition—my parents sent us a bunch of lily of the valley, the flowers that were in my bouquet. If you can’t find the exact blooms from your wedding, you can find similar colors, or even use or make paper flowers. We had cherry blossoms at our wedding, too, so this paper cherry blossom branch was perfect. If there’s a specific flower that makes you think of your wedding, try to find the closest thing and arrange a bunch as a centerpiece.
Table Setting:
There has never been a more perfect occasion to use the items you registered for! Pull it all out, from your china pattern and serving pieces to the vases holding the flowers—even if those flowers are paper. My favorite thing about using wedding gifts is that they remind me of the people who gave them to us almost two decades ago!
Details:
Print out our custom label template for a champagne bottle—along with number tags spelling out your anniversary year—and you’ve got a festive drink, personalized table decor, or extra-special present (write to and from on the back of the numbered hearts and turn them into gift tags!).
I’m a notorious memento keeper, so I dug into storage and pulled out some of the favors and personalized touches I had saved from our wedding—napkins with our initials on them, our D&A matchbooks, and the cootie catchers we had as fun little activities for our guests.
Start saving tomorrow’s souvenirs today, by preserving the newspaper from your anniversary every year. Set aside the first page, or turn it into paper chains, wrapping paper for a present, or punch out paper hearts from the date and turn them into confetti or cupcake toppers.
Even if you’re not a packrat like me, there are so many ways you can incorporate some of the decor from your wedding into your at-home anniversary celebration, or just recreate the vibe of the day. Maybe you had a barn or country wedding, for example, so you use mason jars as votives and put up your holiday string lights.
Even easier? Print out photos and scatter them along the table as decor—or just put your framed wedding photo in the middle of the table as a centerpiece.
The Menu
For our at-home anniversary, I went into my scrapbooks and found our wedding menu so we could recreate the dinner exactly from start to finish (well, almost exactly—I knew my kids wouldn’t eat lamb, so we went with beef instead). The food brought us right back to the wedding day.
What to Serve:
You can cook a whole matching dinner or just take one of your favorite treats from the wedding—the mini hotdog hors d’oeuvres or the late night pizza on the dance floor—and build a meal around that. (Or, go ahead and skip dinner and just recreate the decadent bread, cheese, and antipasti station from cocktail hour!) You might even get inspired by where you got married—lobsters for Maine or pasta for your Italian destination wedding.Maybe you have a favorite family recipe, or collected recipes at your bridal shower. Choose one you love and make it together. That way, you can start a new family tradition!
You could even make your celebration an anniversary breakfast instead of dinner (or start at breakfast, and celebrate all day and into the night). For a breakfast or brunch, make “wedding cakes” out of stacked scones, or different sized pancakes or pound cake.
Another fun way to kick off the big day? A tea-themed tower you can set up any time you want to relive your own royal wedding—click here for crown cupcake topper templates and a banner you can personalize with your own names. If you’re in a royal mood, you can also serve a cocktail or mocktail inspired by Harry and Meghan’s wedding.
Special Extras:
Putting something out of the ordinary on the table is going to make the night feel special. That could be salmon tea sandwiches shaped like mini wedding cakes, or maybe you choose one treat to splurge on, like a tiny tin of caviar—you could even have a little fun and make caviar toast “bowties,” or cut into any shape you like.
The Drinks
Champagne Drinks:
Now is the time to break out the bubbly! Open a bottle of champagne to commemorate the evening.
Make it extra festive by….
–Making a mini champagne bar with add-ins to personalize your drink
–Serving in your nicest glasses. If you don’t have champagne coupes, make it a gift to your partner and get a pair to pull out for special occasions.
–Creating custom wrappers and festive toppers for mini champagne bottles—they’re a fun way to serve bubbly if you’re having a few friends over; make great placecards or favors; or, when lined up, a centerpiece. You can write any phrase like I <3 U or use your initials. You can also wrap your vows, or any other message, around them.
Or, stick to wine. You might
–Drink the type served at your wedding
–Order a bottle from the year you met or were married
–Dress up the bottle with a floral paper topper.
Cocktails:
Here’s where you can get even more creative!
–Recreate the signature cocktail from your wedding night.
–Pour a bottle of whiskey that’s been aged the same number of years you’ve been married.
–Concoct a brand new cocktail that you can enjoy for years to come. (Or make it a mocktail, like this elderflower and lemonade drink we mixed for the royal wedding!)
–Make a cocktail bar inspired by the season you were married (cider for fall, mulled wine for winter, spritzes for spring, or margaritas for summer)
Whatever you drink, don’t forget to toast to each other and many more happy years!
The Dessert
Now, let’s get to the dessert! Whether you order from a favorite bakery or like to bake together, it’s less about the dessert itself than the meaning behind it. Think about…
Your Wedding Cake:
–Serve the same flavor
–Order a cake from the same bakery
–Decorate a plain cake to look like your wedding cake (as best you can!) with fresh flowers or fruit.
-Stencil your cake with an image like this wedding bell design made with our template and cocoa powder, confectioner’s sugar or matcha powder—or cut your own paper letters as a template to write a message, or numbers to immortalize your wedding date.
–Use the cake knife from your wedding and dessert plates from your registry
–Feed each other cake
The Number of Years You’re Celebrating:
–Put as many candles on the cake as years you’ve been married
–Use candles or sparklers in the shape of the number
–Bake the cake in the shape of the number
–Decorate the cake with fruit, sugar, or candy laid out in the shape of the number
–Stack small treats like brownies or doughnuts—as many as the years you’ve been married—to make a “cake.” One year I stacked doughnuts and dressed them up with wedding-themed cupcake toppers.
Other Desserts:
From doughnut walls to pie tables, treats beyond the traditional cake have become popular at weddings (my husband is a big sweets lover, so we had a whole dessert buffet!). Maybe you served cupcakes, cookies, or chocolate fondue. If you had a signature dessert, use that as inspiration for dessert at your anniversary meal. I love Laduree, and their look was a big inspiration to how I styled my wedding, so of course we had some macarons on the table.
The Music
What better way to set the mood than with music? Whether it inspires you to get up and dance with your partner, or simply acts as the best background atmosphere around, there are so many ways to use music to make the night a special one.
For the playlist, think about:
–Songs that remind you of that time. We listened to a Steve Tyrell album since his version of “The Way You Look Tonight” was our first dance.
–Songs that were popular the year you got married—or met!
–The song that you walked down the aisle to.
–Love songs you both like—our Darcy Miller Designs Spotify playlist is a great place to start.
–If you’re really musical, choose a song to represent each year of your lives together. You might start with “Best Day of My Life” by American Authors for the day you met, followed by “Can’t Help Falling in Love With You” by Elivs Presley, “Marry You” by Bruno Mars, and “Going to the Chapel,” then “Be My Baby” by the Supremes, and so on.
You can also start a playlist now, and add to it every year.
The Dress Code
Half of the fun of going out for your anniversary is getting dressed up extra special. Who says you can’t do that at home?
You can even go the extra mile and pull out your actual wedding dress—I did that on our 10th anniversary and it was so special watching my girls try it on!
But that’s not the only option for a fun dress code! If you’ve been together a while, you might dress in the style that you used to wear back when you and your partner first met, or you wear clothes that were popular when you got married. Or if they’re still in your closet, pull out one of the outfits you wore in the run-up to the wedding—at your engagement party, shower, even for the proposal!
The Photo
Start a new “wedding album” by taking a photo each year on your anniversary. It’s even more fun if you recreate a favorite photo from your wedding: whether you’re hugging, dancing, holding hands, or just posing for a portrait. They are sweet photos to have as your marriage grows over the years—and you can of course include new members of the family, too! Kids, dogs, cats, a pet goldfish…
The “Guests”
Who says you can’t still get friends and family involved even if you’re celebrating at home? Arrange a time for your wedding party to hop on a video call—you can even upload a photo of your wedding location and turn it into a custom Zoom background for the call as a surprise to everyone.
When you’re all on the call, take turns raising a glass, giving a toast and recounting favorite memories from the wedding (whether that’s a sweet thought, something funny). You might send a prompt ahead of time—ask them to reminiscence of the first time they met one or the other of you, or the moment they knew you had met “the one.”
If your friends are more crafty than chatty, you can suggest an easy-to-do project to get them involved. Maybe your maid of honor prints out a paper “bouquet” of flowers to toss behind her at the end, or the best man makes a balloon homage of how you both looked on the day you got hitched. Your former bridesmaids can wear paper flower crowns, while the groomsmen sport paper ties. It’s a fun and low-maintenance way to get everyone involved commemorating your special day.
Or, have a dance party! Put on your first dance song or a few favorites from the wedding and everyone can have a dance together—whether in person or via video chat.
The Entertainment
Obviously, yours is the greatest love story ever told. But once dinner and the dance party are over, might want to change into jammies, curl up and watch a movie about another couple on their way to the altar. Some fun choices include:
- -Father of the Bride
- -When Harry Met Sally
- -My Big Fat Greek Wedding
- -The Wedding Singer
- -Four Weddings and a Funeral
- -Crazy Rich Asians
- -My Best Friend’s Wedding
And of course, your own wedding video!
Looking Back
The one thing that’s a must-do for an anniversary? Spend time reminiscing about the years you’ve had together, retell stories, and tell them anew to your kids. Pull out your scrapbooks, photo albums, and videos, and, as you’re looking through, share them with your family and any other important people in your life. We viewed our wedding video with our kids, and sent my parents the digital link—and they watched it on the same night.
And, if your mementos are still sitting in a shoebox, it’s never too late! I created Our Wedding Scrapbook, an interactive book which guides couples through compiling their own.
Looking back on the life you’ve shared helps you to appreciate the things that are worth celebrating from your life together. And by doing so, you’ve added one more memory to your scrapbooks and your lives, and maybe even created a new tradition for the future—which makes looking back a way to look forward, too.
Happy anniversary!
1. Darcy Miller Designs X Lenox Plates, 2. Number Piñata, 3. Digital Frame,
4. Milestone Photo Banner,5. Personalized Wine Bottle, 6. Number Candle,7. Coupe,
8. Personalized Cocktail Shaker,9. Cake Stand, 10. Macarons, 11. Mille Crepe Cake