first anniversary

On March 4th, Larry and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary. It felt a little strange to be celebrating a first anniversary considering we've been together for over ten years. We're typically pretty lax (or lazy) with the celebration of special occasions, but ever since our wedding, I'd been thinking that we needed to start a few anniversary traditions that we could look forward to every year:

1. A March beach trip. 
Since we got married on the beach and since March is a great time of year to escape winter with a warm weather vacation, I thought it would be fun to take an anniversary trip to a different beach each year. (A few suggestions for future reference, Larry: Florida, California, the Bahamas, any Caribbean island, Canary Islands, Fiji, Costa Rica, Belize, Kauai, Mexico, Turks & Caicos...no we can't afford all these trips, but I can dream...)

2. Coconut cake.
After we eloped on Waimanalo Beach, we drove to Oahu's North Shore and grabbed a celebratory slice of coconut cake. As an anniversary tradition, I'd like to eat a slice of coconut cake (or a cupcake) from a different bakery each year. (Preferably from a bakery in a beach town - see #1.)

3. Anniversary photo.
A picture of the two of us each year, taken on March 4th. (Preferably on the beach and maybe with cake - see #1-2.)

Hopefully our first anniversary isn't an indicator as to whether these will become yearly traditions, because I give us a score of 1.5 out of 3. We hoped to take a trip to Florida, but this wasn't feasible due to a family emergency. So we made the best of it and made reservations for a lovely dinner at Restaurant Eve. We were too stuffed from the five-course tasting menu to go out for dessert after dinner, but we did get coconut cake a few days later from Society Fair in Alexandria, Virginia - not on the beach, but still delicious. As for the anniversary photo, I set up my tripod when we got back from dinner and Gravy proceeded to photobomb 30 timer photos in a row. The lighting sucked, we were tired, and Larry was over it, so this will have to do:

It may not be on the beach, but sometimes life gets in the way. Marriage is full of compromises. I had meant to write a post on my thoughts on marriage after the first year, but I'll just sum it up like this: Being married is awesome.

It's even better than cake.