How many anniversaries do you celebrate as a couple?

*The most exciting thing about He Said, She Said is wondering if we’ll still be married by the end of each post! We both write on the same topic but only get to read the other’s work after it’s published.*

This He Said / She Said post is inspired by a question from Sonia of Sonia Styling who asked:

Once you’re married, do you stop celebrating your dating anniversary and only celebrate your wedding anniversary?

He said:

We wouldn’t be Mr and Mrs Romance without an alarming number of romantic dates to celebrate, would we?!

She said:

I like to celebrate at any opportunity, so the more the merrier. Just remember to set alarms so you don’t forget them 😉

What’s more, he says:

It’s probably my fault we have so many significant dates to celebrate. I don’t mind – in fact it kind of keeps me on my toes. I’m absolutely rubbish at remembering people’s birthdays.

I’ve just about figured out when my direct family’s birthdays are (my dad’s is easy cos it’s a day after mine) otherwise I have to create little date patterns like Mrs Romance’s birthday is exactly one week before Christmas Day.

Anyway, the short and long of it is that we celebrate the 15th of every month. It sounds a lot, doesn’t it? But there’s a good reason for it. When we first started seeing each other, we had no idea whether we’d see each other again after I left Australia to go back to England. This would happen before our first anniversary.

Because of this, we decided to make a monthly anniversary of when we met: on the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics – 15th September 2000.

These days it’s not a big thing – we just wish each other a happy ‘Miniversary’ – a phrase I coined – then on the 15th September, our ‘Maxiversary’, we usually do something a bit more special. We go for dinner or enjoy a day together.

Of course, these days, the Maxiversary has been superseded by our wedding anniversary – 8th March. Fortunately (and perhaps fortuitously) this is also International Women’s Day – another handy way for me to remember this very important day!

For our anniversary proper, we usually make a big deal out of it. We still enjoy following those strange traditional rules about what each gift for each year should be made of. Paper for the 1st year, cotton for the 2nd. They’re so random it makes it a fun challenge to buy something special for each other.

This link to about.com is pretty good for a list of all anniversary gifts from the 1st to 100th.

We really enjoy celebrating being together – we never thought we’d see each other again once my visa had run out and I was forced to go back to England. As it turned out, I was back in Sydney within a month, but that’s not the point.

But ever since we decided to make the most of every month we spent together all those uncertain years ago, just a little gesture to say ‘I love you’ each month means so much. I can’t recommend it enough.

And another thing, she says:

When Mr Romance and I first started dating, we were a kind of holiday romance. He was travelling the world and I didn’t think we would be together for a long time.

We began celebrating “mini-versaries”, which are monthly anniversaries from when we started dating.

We celebrated 3 miniversaries before he had to leave and just after he left I knew it was the real thing. Luckily he came back within 30 days of arriving home and now the rest is history.

Those dating anniversaries were so really important to us and we’ve kept them going for almost 14 years. (I can’t believe it’s that long!)

At the start we would exchange gifts, but now we just do something more low-key. It’s more about doing something special for your partner than spending a lot of money. We may head out for a beautiful dinner, or gold class cinema or just have a night in together at home.

When we were planning our wedding, we chose a date to coordinate with our dating anniversary. They’re 6 months apart so we can have a big celebration for each one and it works for us.

Now that we’ve been together for so long, I was thinking of switching to just the wedding anniversary, but I still love celebrating both.

It’s so easy for everyday life to take over and you start to take each other for granted. Remembering our miniversary each month is a lovely reminder to make time for each other and do something special. And I love another reason to give a gift 😉

If you have trouble remembering your anniversaries, I recommend setting up calendar alerts to help you. If your partner is the one who always forgets, you can invite them to your calendar so they get the reminder too.

If you do something great each anniversary, I’m sure neither of you will forget the next time.

What do you do to celebrate your anniversary? Did you ditch your dating anniversary after your wedding?

Photo from our wedding day, photographed by Inlighten Photography