Comments on: Some Thoughts on Anniversaries and Their Requisite Gifts

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 02:27:14 +0000

I’ll only really give my girlfriend a gift if it’s a logical one, something useful. I’m not so big on ‘romantic’ gifts that don’t have any real use beyond the mental one.

By: Jessica

Jessica — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:45:12 +0000

My husband and I go to out to breakfast at the same place we ate breakfast on our wedding day. We talk about the last year, and how well our marriage went, or didn’t. We talk about the changes we hope to make for the new year.

Then we go back to our favorite wooded spot and restate our vows.

This is far more meaningful then any present or expensive dinner.

By: Linda Saull

Linda Saull — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 00:18:29 +0000

My husband and I do not exchange gifts for birthdays or Christmas. Instead, we celebrate our anniversary by going on another “honeymoon”. We usually go somewhere in the Caribbean for a week. This year we celebrate our 21st!

By: sharon

sharon — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 19:09:35 +0000

Trent- hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas, and prosperously frugal new year. Thanks for what you do…this is the first site I’ve enjoyed reading so much and to which I’ve posted.

This is an interesting post or set of posts about gifts and gifting. It resonates with me because I think there’s too much obligatory gift giving in general.

Aside from birthdays and Christmas my husband & I don’t do ‘obligatory’ gifting. Anniversaries we generally treat ourselves to a weekend at different B&Bs w/in a few hours from home and explore the area. We don’t do Valentines Day, yuck! I give surprise gifts throughout the year or send flowers (his office mates think it’s a hoot)when the mood hits as a way to show my love and appreciation for him as a person. I think appreciating each other throughout the year is best and personally I feel a lot less pressure.
Thanks.

By: Zannie

Zannie — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 17:41:59 +0000

My boyfriend does not tend to be the sentimental type, but indulges me when I want to celebrate. And I tell him when I do. ;) This year was my 30th birthday, his 40th birthday, and our 5th anniversary, so we had a lot of big ones and will every five years. We generally assume no gifts for special occasions, though last Christmas I gave him a couple of gifts because I really wanted to. I hid them from him until I gave them to him because I knew if he knew I’d gotten him something he’d feel guilty or obligated, and that was not meant to be part of my Christmas gift.

For our 5th anniversary, we borrowed a friend’s car (we don’t have one) and drove a couple of hours down the coast to spend the night in a private room in a hostel at a lighthouse. We had a picnic dinner on a bench overlooking the foggy ocean. The next day we went to an aquarium a bit farther down the coast. It was perfect.

I don’t think we did anything for any of our other anniversaries, but as of our first year I was still trying not to scare him away. He was very flinchy about the whole idea of having a “relationship” at first, so if I’d made a big to-do of our anniversary he’d probably have freaked. But in general, while I only feel very sentimental about significant anniversaries, the first one is significant! Especially for marriage.

Actually, I take it back, he did do something for our 4th anniversary. He posted to his blog about how lucky he felt to be with me and how glad he was I had “stubbornly” hung onto him in spite of his flinchiness. And that was the best present in the world.

By: castocreations

castocreations — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 17:18:35 +0000

I tell my hubby that he’s very lucky because I could care less about getting a gift on any of our anniversaries. We both even forgot out first four…life just kept going and our moms both had to remind us. LoL On our 5th we did decide to go out to dinner together and that was nice. But otherwise it’s just not a necessity to get gifts. I also don’t want gifts for Valentine’s day. :)

By: GrantParish

GrantParish — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 17:40:55 +0000

My husband and I have been married for 22 years – which is not a notable accomplishment. But our 22 years have been tremendously happy and that is worth noting. We always plan our annual vacation trip around our anniversary date so we have a nice relaxing time away each year. Because it is in October we usually avoid crowds and high-season prices. Our trip is our gift so we don’t give individual gifts to each other.

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 16:14:02 +0000

One thing I’ve noticed in a few of the comments here is the “his” money, “her” money, “our” money scenario. We’ve been married almost 30 years and our mortgage, banking, autos etc are all jointly held… no separate personal accounts as we’ve never seen a need.

Trent, what’s your position/opinion/recommendation on this?

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 16:11:36 +0000

Trent, what’s your position/opinion/recommedation on this?

By: Anne KD

Anne KD — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 15:50:55 +0000

We got married in July 2005. We took vacations the first two years, but this year we stayed home to save for the house. We started talking about next anniversary’s vacation yesterday on our way to my parents’ house, along with other more important communication while on our 2.5 hr drive. One of the best parts of our vacations is to have unscheduled time to be with each other and talk about anything and everything.

By: Kim

Kim — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 14:48:13 +0000

Oh, and my parents in later years (who ALWAYS celebrated their anniversary with a special night out) began to give each other joint gifts. In fact when they sold their house, it was really hard for them to give up their “anniversary rock”, a large boulder they purchased for the yard which was seating for them next to the garden.

By: Kim

Kim — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 14:43:15 +0000

For me, the non-gift is not the point. The point is that my husband does not want to spend money on me. I don’t care about big things, merely a remembrance. I would always have been happy to have a homemade card, a bouquet picked from my garden, a book…anything. I have learned to live with this as a quirk of his and usually buy myself some small remembrance for special days, so that I get to mark the moment without expecting him to do the same. After all, he has a lot of wonderful qualities, he just doesn’t have a sentimental bone in his body and his family did not give gifts. They had money, but they were C-H-E-A-P!!!!! When they bought something it was either for show or to celebrate a gambling windfall. My father-in-law excused this by saying that he didn’t want to be pressured to buy something by corporate America.

I have to laugh. Sometimes when I get a little down about it, as it does feel like I am not valued at times, I remind myself of all the things he DOES that are special. And because our anniversary is really close to Christmas, I no longer beg off of practice or Christmas parties scheduled for the same day, as it is not a celebrated day for us. I will admit though (should any man read this and wonder about their OWN wives) that no matter how well I have learned to cope and get over it, there is still that tug of disappointment each and every time. For 27 years now I have had that tug of disappointment.

What a shame.

By: DrFunZ

DrFunZ — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 14:09:36 +0000

Not married here, but my parents were married for 62 years. I do not know what happened from years 1-15, I cannot remember gifts being exchanged between them. I know they sent each other cards. The best was in 1980 – my mom sent my dad a card that said “I am crazy about you”. To her great surprise, he sent it back to her the next year – then she sent it back to HIM the year after. I think it went back and forth for about 15-20 years until Dad’s Alzheimer’s got to him. I found it among his things when he died: it was addressed and stamped – he forgot to mail it – but he never forgot the person he was “crazy about”! Seems to me that kind of love is way better than any kind of gift.

By: Tarythe

Tarythe — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 13:36:53 +0000

Like Green Panda, my husband (of 2.5 years) and I do trips. I probably won’t remember if he buys me a book or a sweater, but will remember places we go. It doesn’t have to be to a far away place, just a time set aside to travel somewhere together. We’re both full-time students and working, so we can easily get caught up in being so busy and it’s nice to force ourselves to relax. The first year we took a whole weekend to go to Palmyra, NY and stay in a nice little bed and breakfast, and last year we just went camping for a single night. Next year we’ll probably drive to Philadelphia for the day (it’s about 2 hours away from here and yet we’ve never been!).

By: Sunshine

Sunshine — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 12:57:02 +0000

I just had to laugh at your experience. I was readin what your wrote and saying, “Oooh, I bet that didn’t go over well.” While I’ve never been to that level, I’m pretty bad about gifts. I’m getting better, though. My partner and I have great communication and she understands me (now), so I consider it a work in progress.

By: Lynne

Lynne — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 12:43:40 +0000

We non celebrated our 20th anniversary in August. Hubby used to send flowers and a card. I asked if I should take vacation so we could celebrate and he said no. I thought he was kidding and took vacation anyway. I went to Virginia that week to visit my son’s family and came back with gifts for him. He promised to take me to his favorite restaurant soon, but I’m still waiting. I never expected much on anniversaries in the past, but really thought 20 was special….call me silly, but from now on it will be just another day, not because we didn’t celebrate, but because I seemed to be the only one who cared.

By: Rosie

Rosie — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 07:30:39 +0000

As for anniversaries and other traditional gift dates, my husband and I are not programmed to give gifts just because of a date on the calendar. We give meaningful gifts at the time we stumble on something we know the other would enjoy. It doesn’t have to be reciprocated. As he says, a really good gift is something you know some one would like but probably not think to buy for himself or herself. Feeling hurt when your spouse “forgets” I think is an immature response. I’m just happy that my husband is alive, as there are many people who lose their spouses to illnesses and other untimely episodes. Life is the best gift of all.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 06:23:14 +0000

We always try to do something unique – gifts are secondary. For instance, last year the traditional gift for our anniversary was wood – so we went hiking in the woods together :) This year, we went raspberry picking and had dinner on a farm. I can hardly wait to see what next year holds.

By: Mary

Mary — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 02:18:51 +0000

Sometimes we go out to dinner, usually with kids, or make a nice dinner at home. One thing we do every anniversary is take a family picture. In the back of our wedding album are the annual pictures of how our family has changed and grown. This means more than any gift or spendy dinner.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 01:45:38 +0000

My husband and I hated the stress of anniversary gifts, so we decided early on in our marriage to buy something together. One year it was adirondack chairs so we could sit on the deck together. It might be something that we both see and love but can’t justify the expense for no reason, then we buy it as an anniversary gift. We love this, and there is no stress. We will probably start doing it for Christmas as well, since it really works.
We save the “surprises” for non occasions, just to tell each other we love each other.
The Love Languages book helped us to see that gifts weren’t as important as time and communication to us.