Anniversary ideas: a date for every milestone

• Budgetfree
• Best forone month
• Time10 minutes to write

Not "I love you" yet, maybe. Just five specific things you've noticed in the first month: the way they hum when they cook, the terrible pun from the second date, how they always ask the server's name. Specific beats sweeping every time.

• Budgetfree
• Best forone month
• Timean evening

One song for each week you've known each other. Week one could be what was playing at the bar, week four the song you both sang badly in the car. Listen to it together on a walk and explain each pick.

• Budgetlow
• Best forone to three months
• Time1 hour

Go back to the spot of your first date at the same time of day. Order the same thing. It's a tiny, no-pressure way to say "I remember" without making it a production.

• Budgetfree
• Best forsix months
• Timean evening

Over dinner, each of you writes down predictions for the next six months: where you'll go, which friend the other will finally meet, who'll say something embarrassing at a family event. Seal the envelope and write "Open on our first anniversary" on it. Reading it six months later is half the fun.

• Budgetmedium
• Best forsix months
• Timeone night

Six months is a natural moment for a first overnight trip. Keep it close: a town an hour away, a small inn, a cabin. You'll learn more about each other in one shared bathroom than in six months of dinners.

• Budgetdepends
• Best forfirst anniversary
• Timean evening

Same place, same time, same order. Then add the twist: order the thing you were too nervous to order back then and ask the questions you didn't dare to ask. You'll probably discover you both remember completely different details from that night.

Tip: Is the place gone? Get the same kind of food to go and eat it on a bench where it used to be. The story gets even better.

• Budgetlow
• Best forfirst anniversary
• Timea few hours to prepare

Scroll back through your camera roll and pick one photo per month. Print them and write one line on the back of each: what happened, what you were thinking. At dinner, hand them over one by one in order. It's a gift and a date at the same time.

• Budgetlow
• Best forfirst wedding anniversary
• Timea half day

Paper is the traditional first anniversary material in the US, and it makes a surprisingly good date. Start at a bookstore where you each pick a book for the other with a note inside. Then a paper-ticket thing: a concert, a play, a museum. End with letters you wrote each other beforehand, read out loud.

• Budgetlow to medium
• Best forfirst anniversary
• Timea whole day

Your first year was full of firsts. Celebrate with a day of new ones: a cuisine neither of you has tried, a neighborhood you've never walked, an activity you'd both be bad at. Write each first on a card and keep the stack for next year.

• Budgetlow to medium
• Best forsecond anniversary (cotton)
• Timean afternoon

Buy a good cotton picnic blanket and use it for the first time on your anniversary. Pack the snacks from your first year together. From then on, every picnic happens on that blanket, and it slowly becomes part of your story.

• Budgetmedium
• Best forthird anniversary (leather)
• Time2 to 4 hours

Many craft studios run beginner classes where you make a wallet, a key ring or a bookmark. Make one for each other. It'll be a little wonky, and that's exactly why you'll keep it for decades.

• Budgetfree
• Best forany year, best from year two
• Time1 hour

Write ten questions once and ask them every anniversary: What was the best day this year? What did I do that you liked? What do you want more of next year? Record the answers on your phone. In ten years you'll have a time capsule of your relationship in your own voices.

Tip: Keep the questions identical every year. The fun is hearing how the answers change.

• Budgetmedium to splurge
• Best forfifth anniversary (wood)
• Timea weekend

Wood is the traditional fifth anniversary material. Take it literally: a cabin, a fire, a forest walk and no plan beyond that. Five years in, a weekend of nothing together is a luxury.

• Budgetlow
• Best forfifth anniversary, homeowners
• Timean afternoon

If you have a yard, plant a tree together and take a photo next to it every anniversary. No yard? A potted olive or lemon tree on the balcony works too, and so does sponsoring a tree through a local planting group.

• Budgetlow
• Best fortenth anniversary (tin)
• Timea few evenings to prepare

Tin or aluminum is the traditional tenth anniversary material. Fill a pretty tin with ten folded notes, one memory for each year. Open one per course at dinner or one per hour on a long anniversary walk.

• Budgetsplurge
• Best fortenth anniversary and later
• Timea few days

Every couple has one: the place you've said "someday" about for years. Ten years is the sign to stop waiting. If a big trip isn't realistic right now, book a weekend that feels like a preview of it, and put the real one on a date.

• Budgetlow to medium
• Best fortenth anniversary, married couples
• Timean afternoon

No big ceremony needed. Write new vows about the person you've both become, then read them somewhere meaningful, alone or with a handful of friends. Some couples go back to their wedding venue, others pick a beach, a hilltop or their own kitchen.

• Budgetmedium
• Best forfifteenth anniversary (crystal)
• Timean evening

Crystal is the traditional fifteenth anniversary material. Buy two good glasses and take them somewhere high: a rooftop, a lookout, an observation deck. Toast to fifteen years and keep the glasses only for anniversaries.

• Budgetmedium
• Best fortwentieth anniversary (china)
• Time2 to 3 hours

China is the traditional twentieth anniversary material, which makes a proper afternoon tea a sweet fit. Book one at a hotel or set it up at home with mismatched thrifted cups and saucers. Stories from twenty years go well with scones.

• Budgetmedium to splurge
• Best for25th anniversary (silver)
• Timean evening

Invite the friends who knew you when you got together: the one who introduced you, the best man, the roommate who heard every early phone call. Ask each guest to bring one story. Use the group date finder if half of them live in another city.

• Budgetlow to medium
• Best for40th or 50th anniversary
• Timea few weeks to collect

Kids and grandkids each write a page: a favorite memory, a lesson learned from the couple, an old photo. Bind it into a book and present it at a family lunch. For a golden anniversary, it often means more than any gold gift could.

• Budgetmedium
• Best for25th anniversary and later
• Timean evening

Find a local band, a singer or a talented friend to play your wedding song live, at a party or simply in your living room. The first dance, decades later, is a moment nobody forgets.