On Saturday May 4 Zac and I celebrated our one year anniversary. It's incredible how quickly this year has gone by. We weren't sure if we were going to end up at the hospital on our anniversary since Zane could be arriving at anytime, so we opted not to make plans that were too crazy. We weren't going to be heading out of town and obviously being nine months pregnant wine or beer tasting was out of the question. (Ha ha.) And we didn't want to have some incredibly expensive dinner at a restaurant. (I don't have any cute dresses that fit as dresses anymore, anyway.) We talked about what to do for our anniversary as it grew closer and after realizing that this could potentially be the last full day that we both had together just the two of us (Zac works 5-6 days a week) we thought that it would be wonderful to have a romantic day at home.
We knew that no matter what we ended up doing throughout the day, at the end of the night we wanted to cut into the top tier of our wedding cake. The small red velvet cake wth buttercream frosting had been wrapped up tight in our freezer for the last 365 days.
We were happy to find that when we finally unwrapped it from the box and set it out to thaw that it had held up very well. It had only lost a few of its pearl details and still looked gorgeous and tasty.
Zac thought that it would be fantastic to recreate the dinner from our wedding. We had an amazing dinner that evening so I was all for it! We looked up the menu we had chosen from our venue and made a shopping list. The day before our anniversary while I laid in bed resting with my feet up, Zac went grocery shopping and spent the afternoon prepping food for our anniversary dinner before he headed off to work for the night. (I seriously have the most amazing husband ever!)
Zac and I spent the afternoon of our anniversary hanging out together. It was nice to have an entire day to spend with my love. For lunch we enjoyed a recreation of appetizers served at our cocktail hour. The bbq meatballs were fantastic! We pulled out our guestbook that was made up of photos from our photobooth. Guests were able to take pictures in the booth and leave messages for us. Our photographer, Tess, of Van's Studio caught the fun and excitement over at the photobooth. It was a big hit and we were so happy that we had it at the reception.
Zac and I were cracking up as we looked through the guestbook. The faces that were being made, the costumes, and the comments are all priceless. It's such a fantastic keepsake from our wedding.
That evening, Zac started dinner and I pulled out our anniversary china we received as a wedding gift (Mikasa Love Story dinnerware found here) and our wedding toasting flutes (Waterford Wishes Happy Celebrations found here) for the occasion.
Before dinner Zac and I sat down to watch our wedding video. At 5:00pm (the same time that our wedding was scheduled to begin) we pressed play and took in the whole day. (Check out our wedding video at the end of the blog post here or our highlights video in this post here.) I can't explain how happy we are that we have this record of our wedding. It was so great to be able to watch us say our vows to one another and remember how excited we were on that day.
Dinner was AMAZING! Zac did a fantastic job recreating the meal. The salmon, the steak...everything was delicious! Zac will have to pass his cooking skills on to Zane because that is not a skill he will be able to pick up from me. When we had finished dinner we used the cake knife from our wedding to cut into our cake. The Michael Buble station on Pandora had been playing throughout our dinner. Right as we cut the cake "Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch" by The Temptations started. We laughed because this was the song that played when we cut the cake at our wedding. Nicely done Pandora...nicely done.
When dinner and dessert were complete it was time to exchange gifts. The first anniversary is traditionally the paper anniversary. I'm not going to lie. This had me quite stumped for a while. I like to think that I'm a pretty good gift giver but when restricted to a material I felt a little lost. Giftcards were lame and most were plastic anyways. There were no concerts or events coming up that I could get tickets for. With baby on the way buying train tickets for a trip out of town was not a smart idea. In the end I turned to Pinterest for some ideas (big shocker!). I found a fantastic idea (and I'm ashamed to say that I didn't bookmark the link!)....a gift that kept on giving. For Zac, I created a "Sunday Jar". In the jar I placed 52 pieces of scrapbook paper. On each paper there are date ideas, gifts, treats, activities, etc.. Each Sunday, Zac will be able to pick out a paper from the jar to redeem that day or to use throughout the week. The papers have things like: get a bag of coffee, go for a family walk, Daddy needs a new shirt, beer tasting date with the wifey, lazy day in bed. I was happy that Zac's smile got bigger and bigger as he read through each piece of paper in the jar. He pulled his first one, "get a new book" the following day.
Next was my turn. Zac had me stay downstairs in the dining room while he ran upstairs to get my gift. A few minutes had passed and I was beginning to wonder what was taking him so long. A few minutes after that he came down with a smile on his face and extended a hand for me to take. He asked me to close my eyes and he carefully led me up the stairs. Once we reached the top of the stairs and made a right I knew that we were headed into Zane's room. I stood in what I could only assume was the middle of the room for a few moments with my eyes closed as I waited for permission to open them and take a peek at what Zac had in store. I could hear Zac moving around and after smelling matches I knew that he was lighting candles. Soon I could hear "A Kiss to Build A Dream On" (the song we had our first dance to) and Zac told me that I could open my eyes. There in front of me was Zac on one knee, holding out a ring box, a "Marry Me!" banner hung behind him. I couldn't help but cry. Here was my husband, proposing all over again in the same way that he had proposed the first time, using the exact same banner. (I had no idea that he still had it.) (Read all about how Zac proposed here and see how he surprised me a year later here.) I was so blown away by the romantic gesture that I hadn't even taken a good look at my ring.
Zac explained that the banner was the paper part of my gift. The other part of my gift was the addition of a band to my ring that represented our first year of marriage and our first baby. He said he hoped I didn't mind that he killed two birds with one stone giving me something that was both an anniversary gift and a push present all in one. I told him he killed three birds....no Mother's Day gift needed! The ring is absolutely stunning. My poor hands are still crazy swollen and unfortunately the ring only fits on my pinky right now. I can't wait until my hands go back to normal and I can wear this gorgeous, sparkly number on my hand again. I've missed it these last ten weeks. Zac thought that I for sure knew what my gift was. As we were watching our wedding video I had made a comment about how pretty my ring was and how much I missed wearing it. He figured that I had found my empty ring box and put it together that he was adding a band to it. He was wrong. I had no idea... I just really love my ring!
We ended our evening relaxing in bed together watching a movie. I've been exhausted lately and at around 8:30 my eyes started to feel heavy. We got a good giggle thinking that we were laying in bed when at that time one year before we were getting the party started on the dance floor at our reception. Next year we'll probably be having our bedtime routine with our almost one year old.
I couldn't have asked for a better year or a more perfect anniversary with my Zac. I know that we only have more great things in store for us. I'm so lucky to have him!
