Our Wedding Gift

Josh (my new husband) and I enjoy being frugal. We don't need the finer things in life to be happy. We believe in practicality and while we understand why people enjoy luxuries, it's just not our thing. So, when we were talking about possible wedding gift ideas for one another we decided to go the cheap route and pass on it. We figured spending more money on our honeymoon or for our new home or something like that would be more fun. Plus, what do you purchase for people who don't particularly desire extras? I don't wear jewelry or perfume, neither does he. Seemed like an easy decision.

Then one day I was perusing my Pinterest pins and stumbled across an idea to give dates to someone. Originally I saw it as giving dates as a Christmas gift and saw something else similar as a wedding gift to a young couple. So, I thought why not give each other that gift! It seemed perfect the more I thought about it because so many people had warned us to make sure to make time for one another. Warned us not to get sucked into thinking we would see more of each other just because we would finally be living together. This idea not only would be fun, but also helps us to remember to make time for each other no matter what. Although, that hasn't been a problem yet!! Plus, it was something we would spend money on anyway because what we do spend money on is experiences. So, I proposed that we make each other 6 months worth of dates each. We decided to split up the months every other month and placed our ideas, some money if needed, and some accessories for the dates in envelopes and labeled them by month. For the first year of our marriage we will have a surprise date each month that we get to open and pick a good time to go! So, each month once we open our dates I will share them with you for some inspiration!

On the first day of our honeymoon we opened up April (since our honeymoon began April 1st) and I found that we had $20 to go purchase food for a midnight or sunrise picnic of our choice. We were to go purchase whatever food we wanted and go find a fun picnic spot at our choice. We thought it could be fun on our honeymoon, but upon arriving it seemed we didn't have a great view of the sunrise because of all the trees and then we thought a midnight picnic might be a bad idea because of the bears. So, we technically haven't used this one yet, but I can't wait until we do!! I will post pictures of our date when we do!

Also, for those of you interested in this idea check out these great blogs where you can be inspired the way I was!

Find Joy In The Journey
Tip Junkie

Also, when choosing my dates, I used some sites for ideas for cool dates and just tweaked them to fit our personalities. Marie Claire, The Mom Crowd, Love Actually Blog, and Friday, We're In Love all gave me some great ideas for dates. They have so many ideas in fact, that I just might have to use this as a birthday or Christmas gift again in the future to keep on using these date ideas!!!

April Date: Snacks and hot tub at midnight on our honeymoon!
May Date: Movie, dinner, then snacks and star gazing
June Date: $20 B&N gift card, go buy a book we think looks good and read it together
July Date: Picnic in a park, card games, and a "Together List"
August Date:
September Date:
October Date:
November Date:
December Date:
January Date:
February Date:
March Date: