Weddingbee boards

Ladies, I need your help on this one...

On July 7, my fiance and I will be celebrating our first anniversary. We were engaged after just about 11 months, short by some standards I know, and as this will be our only anniversary before we get married I want to celebrate in an especially meaningful way. 07.07.07 is not just the day we celebrate our love, but it is, without doubt, the luckiest day of my life. On that day, my best friends were married to each other. It was an incredible experience for me, the Maid of Honor. Both the bride and groom were classmates of mine all through college and I have countless memories and photos of us through the years. They are two of the dearest people to me. On that day, the Maid of Honor fell in love with the Best Man, who just so happens to be the older brother of the groom. This will, in turn, make my best friends from college my sister-in-law and brother-in-law next summer. It is unbelievably special and rare thing that I treasure.

My fiance and I were engaged in a very quiet way. There were no frills, no bells nor whistles and this was perfectly appropriate for us. He and I knew we wanted to marry and began an exploratory ring search for the purposes of pinpointing for him some ideas of what I like and dislike as he is a complete jewelry novice. As is our way, fate stepped in for us and we found an incredible ring that took our breath away at an incredible price at a shop run by a small town jeweler in a local suburb. A mere hour later we agreed it was meant to be our ring and returned to the shop where the jeweler was grinning and explaining how he knew we would be back. The ring spent the next couple of months in a safety deposit box before being shared with my father over Memorial Day weekend and then without fanfare we woke up the next morning and decided it was the time to make our commitment to each other real and he slide the ring on my finger. It was that simple. It was that sweet.

I do not have a huge budget. We are in the process of securing new jobs and relocating closer to my family, possibly buying a house and planning a wedding, so there is not a surplus of cash lying around these days. With that said, I feel compelled to mark our anniversary in a deeply meaningful way. We have both been very stressed the last few weeks preparing for this move and I feel like this is the perfect chance to slow down, get a little sappy, and focus on nothing other than each other. Somewhere in the back of my mind is this notion that perhaps I should use this opportunity to propose to him, present him with some token that can somehow try to communicate to him the depth of my love for him, my gratitude for having found him. I am not precisely sure how to do this, what that token should be, or even if that is a good idea or simply overly cheesy.

This is where the hive comes in...what is the best way for me to celebrate the anniversary of the happiest day of my life with the man I love more than I knew possible? 

I agree with LeahB, it is a lovley story!  Are you planning on taking e-pics?  Maybe you can do a photo shoot that day and incorporate the picnic idea LeahB mentioned?  It seems, form what you wrote, that perhaps and experience would be more meaningful than an actual gift.  You could also edit what you wrote above and share it with him in a card or journal?

Good luck to you and let us know what you have decided on! :)

Thanks, everyone!

I cannot tell you how refreshing the idea is of just being together and just, well, being. It sounds like heaven on earth!