Our Seventh Anniversary: Cake Tasting, Family Photos, and Little Traditions

Every year we mark our anniversary with small traditions and special moments: recreating our wedding menu, taking day trips near our engagement spot, cooking a favorite honeymoon meal, or even traveling somewhere big like Hawaii. This year we kept several longtime rituals—like our annual family photo—and added a few new ones, including showing our wedding video to Clara for the first time.

We discovered the only way to watch the wedding video was on John’s old camcorder, so the three of us crowded around that tiny screen and hit play. We probably hadn’t watched the footage in five years, so there were moments we’d forgotten that had us laughing out loud. Clara enjoyed seeing some cousins as kids and loved Burger’s cameo—an unexpectedly sweet little trip down memory lane.

One long-running wedding planning regret we often mention is that we never did an official cake tasting. Our wedding featured delicious Ukrop’s cupcakes, but we missed the experience of sitting at a table and sampling a variety of cake flavors, icings, and fillings. This year John did something wonderfully romantic and arranged a belated cake tasting with a local baker—an experience she was happy to offer for a modest fee since we weren’t ordering a full cake.

John considered picking the flavors himself to surprise me, but we decided it would be more fun to choose together—just like we would have before the wedding. Amanda at Sweet Fix prepared small cupcakes so we could taste instead of sampling full cakes, which felt like a perfect hybrid between our original wedding cupcakes and a classic cake tasting.

There were so many tempting options, but we narrowed it down to four favorites: chocolate with peanut butter buttercream; princess white with green tea buttercream (princess white is similar to angel food cake and was John’s top pick); almond with maple buttercream (my favorite—think gourmet waffle flavors); 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 share with friends.

We also left with an imperfect family photo, thanks to what we jokingly call Lady Blurs-a-lot. Don’t mind Teddy in that shot—he was just inspecting the sample cupcakes.

On our actual anniversary we try to get both a family portrait and a photostrip. This year we walked over to the New York Deli to use their vintage photobooth. The results were predictably inconsistent: some years the strips come out crystal clear, others are dark and blotchy, and this time we looked like a family of ghosts. The machine even warns you about its quirks, which makes the whole thing more charming than frustrating.

We love the idea that small unpredictabilities—like photobooth elves—become part of the memory. If anyone local knows of other classic photobooths around RVA, we’d love tips for future anniversaries.

We did manage to capture a decent family photo on July 7th using our tripod and remote. Burger opted out—he always gets uncomfortable when we try to herd him into photos—so he became our annual “I’ll sit this one out” tradition. Teddy is still learning to look at the camera, but Clara stayed perfectly still and even worked her Fourth of July temporary tattoo into the shot, which felt like a win.

In our previous house we framed all our anniversary photos along the bathroom mirror. This year’s new portrait finally motivated us to hang the collection in a small sink nook off the bedroom, a space we pass at the start and end of every day. The photos are arranged chronologically, beginning with our first anniversary at the top. Seeing that sequence on the wall reminded me how much I’d missed those yearly snapshots.

To close out our anniversary we enjoyed a quiet, romantic dinner at Wild Ginger. Clara spent time with Grammy and Tom Tom at a cousin’s swim meet, and we brought Teddy along because we figured he’d sleep through it. He didn’t sleep, but he made an adorable third wheel.

Seven years of marriage and seven years of documenting our anniversaries on this blog. We love making new memories while keeping the small rituals that make each year feel connected to the last. What anniversary traditions do you have—day trips, special dinners, dessert tastings, or something else entirely?