Our 14th Anniversary Gifts to Each Other

Today we’re going back just one year to our 14th anniversary. Hard to believe it was less than a year ago and Our Present Journey wasn’t even conceived of yet! How much has changed in so little time. Our 14th anniversary was celebrated with Ivory and Gold in the traditional and modern categories. Some of these gifts took some serious research and others some advanced planning and creativity. And we feel those gifts are usually the best ones!

Jay to Annie

Ivory #1

Ivory really lets you be creative because it opens up your options to basically anything that’s white or elephant themed. And I was between two Etsy gifts that I found, so I ended up buying both! First, elephants have some special meaning to me as my grandma collected figurines made of crystal and stone. They were such beautiful pieces, and I was glad that I could finally work the elephant theme into a gift for Annie for our 14th anniversary. As we’ve been getting older (yikes!), decorating our house to feel more “adult” has become a frequent activity for us. So I found on Etsy this personalized ivory vase with two cute elephants connecting their trunks above our initials. It’s been on our bedroom dresser with faux flowers for the past year and is a great daily reminder of our love and life together.

Ivory #2

For the second ivory gift, I found a personalized bracelet that used different color stones to illustrate our wedding date using Morse Code. The Etsy store had several options, but I of course chose ivory stones separated by tiny rose gold beads. I’ve always enjoyed gifts that had secret or double meanings that only we understood, like it was our little secret. And what better way to do that than Morse Code! To the outsider, it just looks like a pretty bracelet with varying colors of stones. But to us, of course it means much more!

Gold

Annie had always mentioned wanting something with our kids initials but couldn’t find exactly what she wanted. So I took the opportunity given it was our gold anniversary, to buy her a necklace with each of our three kids’ initials dangling from the chain. It’s a beautiful necklace that looks great on her, and even I get to enjoy it by seeing our kids’ initials when she wears it. She thought it was the perfect gold gift!

Annie to Jay

Ivory

An ivory gift was a little challenging for me. Jay doesn’t typically wear anything in that color scheme and I couldn’t think of anything ivory colored that would be useful for him. As we’ve mentioned in previous posts, he doesn’t go into his office that frequently so a new dress shirt wouldn’t be of much use now either! But since we still attend weddings and other formal events, I thought a nice gift would be a monogrammed handkerchief with our initials and wedding date. Jay hasn’t had many opportunities to use it yet, but hopefully he will over the coming years!

Gold #1

For the modern gift I decided to double up on gold gifts, which is unusual because Jay is not much of a “gold” guy! He doesn’t wear jewelry aside from his wedding band, and a watch once in awhile, which is always silver. So I thought this one would be difficult at first but eventually these gifts just came to me while doing our usual research. Jay is a little bit of a space nerd to put it mildly. He’s constantly trying to teach our kids all about space and whenever I go out for the night his go-to movie is always about space since he knows I don’t really enjoy them.

With that, I found a customized print that showed what the night sky looked like on our wedding day over New York City. I’m not really into space like Jay is (not many people are!). But I have to admit, it was quite beautiful and meaningful to see the constellations that were watching over us as we got married. The print was on navy paper with gold text and I bought a simple gold frame so that we could display it in our bedroom. Mission accomplished (you’re welcome for that corny space joke, Jay)!

Gold #2

On to the second gold gift… as if giving Jay the whole night sky wasn’t enough! 😉 We had a family vacation scheduled for Williamsburg, VA in summer 2023 and Jay had mentioned how many great golf courses they have there and that he was hoping to squeeze a round in on our family vacation. Of course that would mean I’d be left alone with the kids for the day, but we both believe that we need our individual hobby time once in awhile. And that’s why I graciously booked him a tee time followed by a spa day for myself! It turned out to be the perfect anniversary gift because one of the courses there is called Golden Horseshoe. It’s ranked in the top 50 public golf courses in the country so I knew Jay would love it.

14 years in the books and we’re only two months away from our 15th anniversary! We really need to start researching anniversary gift ideas for crystals and watches. If you have any recommendations please contact us via email or DM!