One downside of our backyard wedding was how quickly it passed — we barely had time to enjoy the food. We’d chosen to skip a caterer and handle the entire menu ourselves, which now seems either brave or a bit crazy. Because of that, when our one-year anniversary rolled around last July, we considered getting dressed up and going out for a nice dinner (I even thought about wearing my dyed wedding dress). Instead, my husband suggested we recreate our backyard wedding dinner at home so we could finally savor the food we’d made.
Since we were married in our backyard, it felt fitting to grill a few things and pick up some sides to recreate that special night. We even took a corny photo under the arch where we’d exchanged vows (we’d moved the arch from the middle of the yard to the entrance to the back woods after the wedding):
For our anniversary meal we recreated the menu closely. Of the three entrees we’d offered at the wedding, we chose the blue cheese Angus burgers with parmesan caesar dressing and added lemon pepper potato chips and rotini salad to round out the meal:
For drinks at the wedding, we’d collected glass bottles from a local wine shop to avoid plastic pitchers and keep a classic look. Green bottles held water, brown bottles held sweet tea, and clear bottles held homemade mint lemonade (fresh mint plus lemonade is delicious). We also had plenty of red and white wine and vintage glass Coca-Cola bottles on hand. The glass bottles gave the buffet a clean, timeless feel.
For our anniversary recreation we took a simpler approach and popped open a can of Fresca instead — still refreshing and just as enjoyable:
The food was so tasty it practically speaks for itself:
We even reused some wedding details like the lemon-and-lime patterned napkins — we still had extras a year later, so that detail was easy to replicate. Here they are from the wedding day, placed on the tables 365 days earlier:
We also saved two wedding cupcakes in wax paper and froze them in a Tupperware container. A year later, they thawed beautifully and tasted just as good — frozen storage worked surprisingly well for preserving them.
No anniversary ritual of ours would be complete without a photobooth strip. On our wedding night we paid $3 for a strip at a local booth, and we love keeping photostrips to commemorate special days. We store them in a cup on our open dining room shelves:
That first-anniversary recreation became a sweet tradition, but for our second anniversary we decided to change things up. Instead of repeating the at-home BBQ, we went to Brio, the Italian restaurant where we’d had our rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding. It was a delicious way to celebrate.
After that meal we were happily stuffed and snapped a few photos in the backyard, posing in front of the hedges where our family portraits had been taken a year earlier:
We finished the evening with another photobooth strip at the same diner downtown, keeping the little tradition alive and adding another memory to our collection:
That’s how we celebrated our first two anniversaries — one recreated at home so we could savor the DIY wedding food, and the next with a cozy meal at a favorite restaurant. Do you have any anniversary traditions or fun ways you mark the day each year?
To read more about how we DIYed our wedding food for an upscale backyard celebration, see the details in our wedding album.
p.s. We have a huge announcement coming in a few days — stay tuned!