My 1st Wedding Anniversary

Sunday is my wedding anniversary. A whole year ago I got married to my Ukrainian wife here in sunny Devon. As a treat we are spending a weekend (away from the hulking teenagers) in Sunny Newquay, the one in Cornwall. I will not be taking my surfboard as I assume that would be deemed insensitive and unromantic.

I have of course been considering what present I should buy for my dear wife. I have checked on the internet and it seems that the correct gift for a first anniversary should be of Paper. Which given the state of my bank balance after one years marriage seems to be a suitable and cheap gift. So here goes with some ideas.

Of course on first hearing that the gift should be of paper, Airplane tickets home first came to mind, but of course that is churlish and uncaring.

An anniversary website suggested ‘A lovely origami booklet or box folded in a shape that's special to the recipient. There could even be a second gift tucked into the paper’. Good idea, but as my anniversary is on Sunday, I don’t really have the time to do the ten week course in origami to be able to fold a square of paper into any shape other than a wrinkled ball that is hooped into the waste paper bin.

The next suggestion was ‘A first edition of a favourite book’ another bright idea from who ever it was put this website together. My wife is into literature, so I would hazard a guess that a first edition Tolstoy is out of my league, and as for their other suggestion of paper tickets to the theatre or cinema, give me a break, what about the paper tickets to watch England play rugby, that’s a much better use of the concept, isn’t it?

Another wedding website suggests that the modern replacement for a paper gift is a clock. Why a clock, aren’t we submerged with time telling devices? Nearly every thing electrical in our house is screaming the time at us. We have watches on our wrists, clocks on our mobiles, microwaves, TV’s, washing machines, videos. DVDs, Computers, we seem to be obsessed with watching the time fly by, maybe that’s because we never seem to have any. So a clocks out anyway I don’t have the time to buy one!

Another website suggests the ‘gift of poetry’, that could work, it’s on paper and I could write it, how romantic.

Here Goes:

On our first Anniversary
I want to say how much you mean to me
We belong together like a dog and flea
I’m glad you said you’d marry me

Now on the great and lovely day
I’ll shout as loud as a Donkey’s bray
I’ll kiss your hand if I may
I’ll promise never to run away (again)

This the day that we were wed
And remembering what went on in bed
I don’t even mind that you said
It hurts and then you bled

So this is our day my darling
I’ll probably drink a few Carling (s)
Let our love fly like starlings
Because you will be my darling


Hmmm maybe not a good gift. But hey it’s the thought that counts right?