Every year we celebrate our anniversary with little traditions: recreating our wedding menu, taking a day trip near our engagement spot, cooking a favorite honeymoon meal, or even taking a big trip to Hawaii. This year was no different. We kept up several annual rituals (including the photo that many of you asked about) and added a couple of new ones, like showing our wedding video to Clara for the first time.
It was a little funny because the only way to play the video was on John’s old camcorder, so we all crowded around the tiny screen and hit play. We probably hadn’t watched it in five years, so several moments surprised us and had everyone laughing. Clara enjoyed seeing some of her cousins as kids instead of teens, and she especially loved Burger’s cameo. It was a sweet, small trip down memory lane.
One thing we often joke about from our wedding-planning days is that we never got to do the classic cake tasting. We loved the Ukrop’s cupcakes at our backyard celebration, but sampling a table of cake flavors, icings, and fillings sounds like one of the best parts of planning a wedding. Two dessert-loving people like us missing out always felt like a funny oversight.
Then John did something extremely romantic: he arranged a belated cake tasting with a local baker who agreed to do a tasting for us for a modest fee, since we weren’t actually ordering a cake. At first John considered picking flavors himself so he could surprise me, but we decided it would be more fun to choose together like we would have when planning the wedding. He told me about it on our anniversary, and at the end of the week we met Amanda at Sweet Fix to taste the samples she prepared.
Amanda bakes cupcakes rather than full cakes so people can sample more flavors, which made the experience feel like a blend of our original wedding cupcakes and a traditional cake tasting. Choosing flavors was a delightful challenge given all the options. We finally settled on: chocolate with peanut butter buttercream; princess white with green tea buttercream (princess white is like angel-food cake and was John’s favorite); almond with maple buttercream (my favorite — it tasted like a gourmet waffle); and vanilla with strawberry jam filling and strawberry buttercream (Clara’s pick).
We each tasted every flavor and took home a box of extras to enjoy and share. We also came away with a not-very-great family photo, courtesy of what we now call Lady Blurs-a-lot. Don’t mind Teddy in the picture — he was just inspecting the sample cupcakes.
On the subject of imperfect family photos: as some of you remember, we try to get a family photo plus a photostrip each year on our anniversary. Last Monday we made the obligatory trip to the New York Deli, which still has an old-time photobooth in the back. The results were ridiculous. The prints from that booth vary wildly — some years they’re crisp, sometimes they’re dark and spotty, and this year we looked like a family of ghosts.
It’s a bummer, but the machine does warn you about its quirks. You’ve got to love those mischievous little booth elves. If any locals know of other authentic photobooths in RVA, we’d love suggestions.
We managed to get one decent family shot on the 7th using a tripod and remote. We tried to include Burger, but he declined — every year he resists being squeezed into the photo, which has become an anniversary tradition of its own. Teddy is still working on smiling for the camera, but Clara was perfectly in focus, which felt like a victory. She even incorporated her 4th of July temporary tattoo into the photo, which added a fun touch.
In our previous house we framed all our anniversary photos around the bathroom mirror, and seeing the newest photo finally pushed us to hang the collection here. We used a narrow wall in the sink nook off our bedroom. It’s nice to pass the photos at the start and end of each day. The frames begin with our first anniversary and proceed chronologically from top to bottom in each column. I hadn’t realized how much I missed those yearly images until they were back on the wall.
We also tried to cap off the anniversary with a romantic dinner at a place called Wild Ginger. Clara spent the evening with Grammy and Tom Tom at her cousin’s swim meet, and we brought Teddy because we figured he’d sleep through dinner — which didn’t happen — but he made an adorable third wheel.
So that’s how we celebrated seven years of marriage: revisiting old traditions, trying new things, and enjoying a long-overdue cake tasting. We’ve shared each anniversary on this blog, and we love hearing about yours. What wedding traditions do you keep — day trips, special dinners, dessert binges?