My husband and I recently celebrated our one year wedding anniversary (May 2015). For our anniversary I decided I was going to start a new tradition by making him an A to Z Alphabet Date Book which worked out perfect because the traditional gift for one year of marriage is paper.
The Alphabet Date Book makes a great gifts for your wedding day, first wedding anniversary, Valentine's Day and Christmas. You can start the alphabet dates whenever you want and go on the dates whenever you want. We are going on the alphabet dates each wedding anniversary to celebrate being married and the alphabet dates add a nice twist and help keep the dates fun!
The Alphabet Date Book makes a great gifts for your wedding day, first wedding anniversary, Valentine's Day and Christmas. You can start the alphabet dates whenever you want and go on the dates whenever you want. We are going on the alphabet dates each wedding anniversary to celebrate being married and the alphabet dates add a nice twist and help keep the dates fun!
Supplies:
- A cute little notebook (I bought mine at Walmart for $4)
- Markers
- Scissors
- Glue sticks
- Pictures of the two of you
- Magazine numbers and letters - optional
- Time
This book took some time and planning to make but lucky for you, you can just follow my layout and it won't take as much time. If you want you can type up the pages, print them out and glue them into a notebook but I wanted it to be more personal, after all I plan on this notebook lasting our entire relationship so I didn't want it to look like it was thrown together last minute. The hand written words and the magazine numbers/letters make the Alphabet Date book more personal.
How To:
1. First I decorated the cover of my A to Z Date book. This step is of course optional if you have a really fancy or cute cover you would like to keep as is but if not then you can put whatever you want on the cover. I printed out the alphabet (A to Z) that says I love you in it, mated it to some paper and taped it to the cover using clear box tape. You can see the cover in the cover photo above.
2. The first page in my A to Z Date book is the cover page. It basically has the title of the book, our names and anniversary on it.
3. Next is a page showing three important dates in our relationship along with a picture from each of the three dates - When we started dating, When we got engaged and When we said "I Do".
4. Next I made a list of 10 Reasons I'm glad I married my husband along with a few of our wedding pictures; this is a wedding anniversary gift so I thought it was only appropriate to let my husband know why I love him and married him!
Sorry I'm not going to share the 10 reasons with you because I want you to make your reasons personal to your relationship and not copy mine.
Sorry I'm not going to share the 10 reasons with you because I want you to make your reasons personal to your relationship and not copy mine.
5. I then wrote a cute saying I came across along with a print out of all the Anniversary gifts by year that I found on the internet. This list included the Modern, Traditional and Flowers that go with the year.
I don't know if we will always get gifts to go with the year but I figured it could come in handy and we won't have to look it cup every year.
I don't know if we will always get gifts to go with the year but I figured it could come in handy and we won't have to look it cup every year.
Saying - "Love is not about how much you say I Love You but how much you prove that it's true."
6. Next is the direction page to explain how the A to Z Date book works along with a list of A to Z date ideas incase we get stuck one year. I found this list on the internet and printed it out.
Directions: Here’s how it works…. the A to Z
Anniversary tradition goal is to plan everything about your wedding
anniversaries around the letter that goes with that year. Your first
anniversary letter is A, your second
anniversary letter is B and so on until you reach the letter Z (26 years). Once
you make it all the way through the alphabet you can choose to start over with
A or wait and celebrate the bigger anniversaries like 30, 40, 50, and 60. Be
creative with where you go, what you eat and what you do. Don’t forget to take
a picture and write it down in this awesome notebook!
7. Start the alphabet pages. For these I combined the all about the letter dates with the ABC's of why I love you. I used magazine numbers and letters to help the letters and anniversary numbers stand out from my writing.
Leave the page across from the words blank (back of pages blank) so you can add pictures from your anniversary date.
I recommend typing everything up or writing it out before you create this book. That way you know everything is spelled correct before you write it out. This will also help you know that you have a word for every letter.
Leave the page across from the words blank (back of pages blank) so you can add pictures from your anniversary date.
I recommend typing everything up or writing it out before you create this book. That way you know everything is spelled correct before you write it out. This will also help you know that you have a word for every letter.
Here is the order I wrote everything on the alphabet pages:
- Letter with a reason why I love my husband (A to Z) - Try to come up with words that describe your significant other.
- Where we went - This can be anything from the name of a town to the name of a restaurant
- What we ate - Any food or beverage you had that starts with that letter
- What we did - Activities you did (check
- Gifts - Gifts you gave each other. These do not have to match the letter.
- Anniversary Year
I gave my husband the A to Z Date book a few days early so we could plan out our date together but I had made an insert card with my "All about A" date ideas just incase he wasn't prepared for an early gift.
For our "All about A" date aka our first anniversary we went putt putt golfing at Adventure Falls then out to eat at Applebee's where we ordered an Appetizer and Alcoholic Beverage with our meal. After dinner we watched Pitch Perfect 2 staring Anna Kendrick. As far as gifts go, I made him this awesome paper notebook and he made me a dozen beautiful paper carnations with coupons on the petals.
I printed out a few pictures from our date and used a glue stick to make a mini collage on the page across from the alphabet date details page.
For our "All about B" date we played the Breakout games with my Brothers and Broke out in 55:29 minutes. We ate at BD's Mongolian Grill, my husband ordered a Blue Moon. My husband bought us matching cotton "Together Since" shirts and I made my husband a Cotton gift basket.
I printed out a few pictures from our date and used a glue stick to make a mini collage on the page across from the alphabet date details page.
For our "All about B" date we played the Breakout games with my Brothers and Broke out in 55:29 minutes. We ate at BD's Mongolian Grill, my husband ordered a Blue Moon. My husband bought us matching cotton "Together Since" shirts and I made my husband a Cotton gift basket.
8. After I finished all of the alphabet pages I glued a bunch of "I Love You's" to the back of the Z page. I then wrote a letter (sorry, it's personal so I blurred it out) to my husband about things I think may happen over the next 26 years, how we stuck it out, how I still love him, etc... and ended it with the saying, "And I thought I loved you then".
My husband loved this gift and we can't wait to go on the other 25+ dates and come up with creative date ideas. Make this book your own and customize it with different things you love about your husband to better suit your relationship. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, feel free to comment below if you liked it!
You might also like my Alphabet Date Ideas:
- A to Z Date Ideas - Alphabet Dating Guide
- All about A Date Ideas
- All about B Date Ideas
- All about C Date Ideas
- All about D Date Ideas
- All about E Date Ideas
- All about F Date Ideas
- All about G Date Ideas
- All about H Date Ideas
- All about I Date Ideas
- All about J Date Ideas
- All about K Date Ideas
- All about L Date Ideas
- All about M Date Ideas
- All about N Date Ideas
- All about O Date Ideas
- All about P Date Ideas
- All about Q Date Ideas
- All about R Date Ideas
- All about S Date Ideas
- All about T Date Ideas
- All about U Date Ideas
- All about V Date Ideas
- All about W Date Ideas
- All about X Date Ideas
- All about Y Date Ideas
- All about Z Date Ideas
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