The hubby and I are celebrating our 3rd wedding anniversary next month! Kind of hard to believe we’ve been together for 9 years and married for 3 of those already. Man does time fly…
I was brainstorming some frugal ways we could celebrate our anniversary that we would really enjoy, yet wouldn’t cost a fortune at the same time. While we would love to do a weekend trip alone somewhere, I can’t imagine leaving Little Miss behind or spending hundreds of dollars on just a weekend for the two of us.
I came up with some fun celebration ideas for us to choose from and though that I would share with you all too in case you need help brainstorming some of your own ways to celebrate anniversaries or other special occasions coming up!
7 Frugal Ways to Celebrate Your Anniversary:
1. Write love letters to each other
My hubby and I wrote long love letters to each other right before our wedding day, that we then exchanged on our honeymoon. It was our way of sharing our feelings without having to get too mushy and emotional during our actual wedding ceremony (I was not about to intentionally ruin my makeup!).
It was so sweet and we both still kept them over these past few years. It’s something that I really will cherish forever, and I think that anniversaries are a nice time to remember all the things you love about each other that you might not think to express on a daily basis.
2. Have a nice picnic lunch at a scenic spot
Pack a nice meal to enjoy together or pick up something from a local deli, grab a bottle of wine, an outdoor blanket, and you are set for the perfect picnic date!
Set out to find a picturesque park nearby, or even an open field depending on where you live. Even if you end up in your own backyard, it’s fun to get out of your home and change your scenery a bit.
3. Make a special dinner at home
Try out a fun new recipe that is maybe a little bit more complicated than you would try on a regular night. Have fun creating a delicious meal together and working in unison to figure out how to make something new.
Light a few candles, put on some music you both love, and just enjoy a relaxing night at home together!
4. Explore somewhere new together
Back when you were first dating, you probably had fun exploring all types of new places together.
Now that you’ve been together for awhile, you probably don’t explore together as often as you used to. I think it really does help to put a spark back into your relationship when you explore and discover new places and things together! Make a point to go to a town you’ve never been or try that new coffee shop you’ve been meaning to go to and experience something new together.
Even if it’s just moseying around your town’s downtown and popping in and out of the shops, it’s fun to be out and about!
5. Attend a local high school or college event
High schools and colleges tend to put on a lot of great events during the year, and most of them are pretty cheap to attend. Perhaps their theater department is putting on a production that you’d like to see, or there is a football game that you think would be fun to check out.
Take advantage of these resources you have at your disposal to have a really fun night out at an event that won’t break your budget either! The huge bonus is that you’re supporting some local schools at the same time. And if you are high school or college sweethearts, it might bring you right back to the mindset that you had when you first starting dating 🙂
6. Find a free outdoor movie or concert night
Many towns have free events they host for residents to get together and have a fun night out for free. I know that in my town, we have concerts in the park every Tuesday night that are completely free to anyone who would like to attend. Even residents from other local towns are free to come if they’d like!
Take a few minutes to look online and see what types of events the towns or park districts near you host, I’m sure you will find a lot of entertaining options!
7. Go for a bike ride or hike at a forest preserve or other outdoor nature area
Being out in the fresh air together can be so rejuvenating for your relationship! Take your bikes or hike around a local forest preserve and enjoy a morning or afternoon of being in the great outdoors.
Being outside is a great way to force yourselves to unplug from technology and just focus on reconnecting with each other for a few hours. You could even pack a picnic to make it a full day of fun together!
How do you typically celebrate your anniversary? Share with me in the comments below!
Happy anniversary! Great ideas for some inexpensive alone time. My husband and I have done most of these, if not for our anniversary, then just for going out on dates etc. We really love cooking together on special occasions though.
Thanks Kristi! Cooking together can be really fun, we love doing that too when we get the chance!
Happy (almost) anniversary, you two! You know you’re with the right person when you can do just about anything together and still make it feel special when it’s just the two of you enjoying the time 🙂
Thanks Alex! 🙂 Yours is coming up so soon, I really cannot believe you guys have been married for 3 years already too. Craziness!
Happy Anniversary…love the list and all sound like they would be special time to spend with each other for your special day. I love the “love letter”, I might need to try that for my 12th year anniversary 🙂
Thank you Lisa!! Ooo 12 years?! That is awesome, congrats to you on that!
Congratulations, friend! I really like this post. Anniversaries can be just as high-pressure (and commercialized) as Valentine’s Day, but really, they don’t have to be. These ideas sound SO much fun I want to do them all with my husband! For our first anniversary, we cashed in on a gift card to a restaurant that was given to us for our wedding!
Thank you Daisy! Exactly, we usually never exchange purchased gifts for our anniversary. We would rather experience something fun together instead 🙂 That’s great that you were able to use a wedding gift to cover your anniversary dinner!
These are great ideas and would really work for any date night! My boyfriend and I typically enjoy a meal together to celebrate our anniversary, sometimes at a restaurant and sometimes at home.
They really would Ali! Agreed, even just a simple meal together can be so special and enjoyable!
Love the suggestion to go outside and spend time together sans technology. Some of my very favorite moments together have gone totally undocumented on the interwebs, and that’s fine by me. Happy early anniversary!
Absolutely Penny! That’s the best quality time together we have, is when we put the technology away completely 🙂 Thank you!
Love these ideas! Our Anniversary is Sunday and we are going on a little two night stay in a town up north of us and going to a small water park. But I’m keeping these in mind because there will be years when we won’t be able to go somewhere like that possibly and I love these frugal ways to still do something special with each other! <3
Happy almost anniversary to you Rebecca! We actually did a little road trip for our first wedding anniversary and REALLY enjoyed it. It was a great time. I think trips are a fantastic reason to spend money 🙂
Happy Early Anniversary! I love these ideas, especially writing love letters to each other. My husband and I started dating when cell phones weren’t used as much (think Razr phones) so we wrote love letters all the time. It’s a dying art.
Thank you Allison! Haha um YES! I actually had a Razr phone when my hubby and I started dating….sounds like we are about the same age. Lol!
Happy Anniversary! These are great ideas for any special occasion…Valentine’s Day, date night etc.
Thank you Heather!
Great tips! My anniversary is coming up in less than a month so good timing for this post!
Thanks DC! Happy anniversary to you – September is a great month to get married I hear 😉
Happy early anniversary!! These are great ideas – especially love the picnic in the park! We normally have dinner at home, haha. Nothing too crazy but we both enjoy it!
Thanks Sarah! Haha we do that a lot too, last year we did that actually! I decided we needed to spice it up a bit this year 🙂
Early congrats on your anniversary! That’s so cute that you both wrote love letters to each other around the time you got married. You should definitely do that again and I like all of these ideas. We usually try to experience something new together since we don’t go on formal dates as often as we’d like. I always check to see if any fun events are going on in the neighborhood or I turn to Groupon for discounts on dining and outings.
Thanks Chonce! I love Groupon for dining and activity discounts too!!
Love this list, I want to add staring into each others eyes for 30 seconds. It sounds easy but it’s super intimate and helps you reconnect with you partner on a deeper level. We are going to write love letter’s to each other this year. Only a few more months and we hit 6 years!!
Great addition Mary! Although I would honestly be cracking up the entire time lol I am so bad with keeping a straight face. Wow, congrats to you on 6 years, that’s fantastic!!
One year I made a love note scavenger hunt. I haven’t been that creative for the last few :(. He always gets me flowers for our anniversary and I have all of them saved (from other occasions too) and dried out since we were dating.
That is so cute Jeniece! What are your tricks for drying your flowers out? I tried to do that with my wedding flowers and it was a total fail lol I’m terrible at crafty things like that!
Happy anniversary! These are great ideas. I’ve been married for 10 years and we’ve done several of these. Thanks for sharing!
You always spark the best ideas Christina! I love these! 🙂
Those are really awesome ideas Christina,
Congratulations on your 3rd wedding anniversary too :). Indeed, i also believe that time is really flying. Looking back, i still remember when i celebrated my birthday last year September and while thinking about it, it still seems to me as if it was just yesterday.
So indeed, time is flying these days
This was a good read! Nature is always a great way to be frugal and relax!
Thanks, it’s very informative
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