Ivory or Gold? Maybe Not. Our Super-Frugal Anniversary Plans

Today is our 14th wed­ding anniver­sary.  Accord­ing to var­i­ous web­sites, the tra­di­tional anniver­sary gift for the 14th year is ivory.  The mod­ern or con­tem­po­rary gift is gold.

The Hus­band and I are break­ing from tra­di­tion this year — and, no, I’m not talk­ing about gold instead of ivory.  This year we’re break­ing away from our tra­di­tional meth­ods of cel­e­brat­ing our anniver­sary.  Each year, either on our anniver­sary or as close as we can to that date if the sched­ule doesn’t work right, we go out to din­ner and exchange gifts.

This year we’re going out to din­ner, but for the very first time since we’ve been mar­ried we’re going out to din­ner with­out the kids.  Yup, for the past thir­teen years we’ve taken our chil­dren with us when we go out on our anniver­sary.  There’s a rea­son for that — and no, it’s not because we couldn’t find a sit­ter.  We’ve always included our chil­dren in our anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tions because they were both present at our wed­ding (hm, I’ll have to explain that in depth and detail our super-frugal wed­ding some­time soon).

Due to my exten­sive food aller­gies, din­ing out is a very rare occur­ance for me.  In fact, most of my “din­ing out” con­sists of watch­ing other peo­ple eat.  But there is a restau­rant that serves one dish I can eat — Red Lobster’s crab legs.  When we go, I sim­ply order a plate of crab legs – no salad, no potato, no sides at all.  I can’t even have the melted dip­ping but­ter.  But I can eat the steamed crab legs.  So that’s where we’re going tonight — just the two of us.

Nor­mally, din­ner at Red Lob­ster would be any­thing but a fru­gal date.  But tonight it will be.  First, it’s Mon­day so tonight is Crab Fest at the local Red Lob­ster.  Sec­ond, The Hus­band recently cashed in some Amer­i­can Express reward points and got a $100 gift card.  So bring on those crab legs — I’m feast­ing tonight!

As for the tra­di­tional anniversary-gift exchange, no one will be receiv­ing either ivory or gold because we’ve agreed not to buy anniver­sary gifts this year.  Not that there would have been gold or ivory involved any­way.  Typ­i­cally, The Hus­band and I buy each other some­thing small like a new book or a CD.  But this year, inspired by Melissa and Eric’s story, I sug­gested that we com­pletely forgo anniver­sary presents and The Hus­band required no convincing.  Later I clar­i­fied my posi­tion — no need to buy each other a gift this year but that doesn’t mean we can’t give each other a present

image credit: Jeff Bel­monte

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