June 1st 2020 was our 1 year wedding anniversary. May 31st 2020 was our 3 year anniversary of meeting each other and starting our lives together. We knew from the moment we met that our relationship was going to go somewhere. I don’t know if I believe love in first sight but there was most definitely a spark. A HUGE spark between us and we both felt it. I am so very glad I asked him out to Harry Potter Trivia. Our team name was “Neville Gonna Give You Up” and we may have gotten 3rd place? I can’t remember, we kept going back week after week playing trivia at the same spot until they shut down. Even won a few times! Like Game of thrones Trivia. Our team name was “Hold Me Closer Tiny Lannister.” I’m very proud of our team names.
Sorry, I got off topic! Anniversaries! I’m a romantic. I always have my husband somewhere on my mind. Everything I do is with him in mind. I kept trinkets from every date we went on or anything involving a ticket stub or a memento. I went into full hoarder mode. Pamphlets from museums, movie tickets, concert tickets, wrist bands from bars, and even hospital name tags for when he took me to my colonoscopy. Does it sound creepy as hell? Oh 100% it does. I kept them because I knew our relationship was going somewhere. I kept them because they meant something to me. That’s the thing though with romantic stuff. It can be so romantic to one person and as you describe it to another person they’re like “Dude, wow.. That is stalker level crazy.”
Instead of having a box full of creepy mementos in my closet out of reach from him like a serial killer trophy box I decided to do something with my treasures. Also quick note: He is 5’5 and I’m 6’2. its so much easier to hide things from short people. Top shelf baby! He ain’t ever gonna find gifts up there! So I take my creep/romance box down from its hiding place and hatch a plan. I figure I will do a scrap book type of thing. Each memento I had usually had some kind of picture tied to it. How cool would it be to compile all those stupid selfies we took and put them with my mini treasures!?
Well I did it. It took months! There was no way to sneak away and do it either with Covid-19. He is a nosy little punk so I just had to be brutally honest with him. I told him that I was going into the guest room to work on something. I played my threats off as a joke but I fully meant them. I told him something along the lines of: “If you open this door you will ruin everything and I will cry. Do you want to make me cry?! WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO MAKE ME CRY DANIEL!?!?” Reaaaaaal over the top dramatics. Its honestly the best way to get your message across. It was pure comedy and he giggled but also 100% truth. So I compiled all the pictures I would need and printed them out at Walgreens. They almost always have some kind of 40% off sale or code you can use. The pictures are like 27 cents or something cheap like that anyway. So I printed over a hundred and started pairing them with my kept memory pieces. I used envelopes I had leftover from our wedding invites to keep everything organized.
Bought a cool little memory album and separate photo pages to go in it. I knew the pages would be black so I got white gel pens that for whatever reason came with a template. I used that template to do a lot of the weird little art things or text parts because I can’t draw. My penmanship is atrocious! I tried my best but that template really helped me out.
I organized our memories over 3 years chronologically because OCD. Not everything made the cut. I could of figured out what I wanted first and just printed out pictures strategically. However I had so many memories I wanted to put. I wish I had 200 more pages so I could have put them all. The book isn’t that big so I had to choose the best ones. Choosing the best memories when they’re all so great is pretty tough. So I went down to the aesthetics of the page and how much each one meant to us.
I included our trips to various places and any tiny adventures we had too. Most pages had a little memento attached to make it much more special. I even kept every note he wrote me. He would leave this adorable little notes every morning. Some were even relevant to the pages in my book so it was like he had designed part of this book himself! I even opened the book with one!
I mean one of the notes he left me literally said “I think I want to marry you!” Which is a quote from a song but still! I placed it right before the wedding section of the book and it worked perfectly!
Most of the book was our engagement party, wedding, and honeymoon since this was a present for our 1 year wedding anniversary. I was very proud of this book and even got emotional while putting it together.
Its honestly the most thoughtful gift I have ever put together and I truly don’t know how to one up myself next year. I set the bar too high!!! I’ll have to buy him a kid or something. Oh! That was totally a joke but reminded me that on the last page of the photo album I included a article about how to adopt in Florida. Isn’t that cute as hell!? Nice touch honestly. Not trying to be a douche here but I was proud of that! We’ve always talked about it but never done any research so now we are starting to jump into that world! That is a whole different blog post though!
Anyway, I hope you have taken away something from this. Save those little keepsakes. Doesn’t have to be for a lover. Keep those ticket stubs from shows you see with your mom. Or that menu from the wine tasting you did with your friends.
You can pair those with pictures and create very thoughtful gifts. Doesn’t have to be a whole book like I did. Mayvb a little shadow box or a frame. Personalized gifts are always way more thoughtful and meaningful. Shows those special people in your life that you’re always thinking about them!
