This year is a leap year, and this weekend, I have a couple getting married on the 29th of February. Which is a pretty cool date to get married for at least one of two reasons:
It’s a rare date, reflecting the rare, precious nature of the couple’s love
They get to save heaps of money on anniversary presents
Now I’m going to take a guess and say that they will probably still want to celebrate their anniversary once a year. But their actual anniversary date will only come along every four years, so what to do? One solution I proposed was to mark it using the period from midday on the 28th til midday on the 1st. Or just get greedy and make the celebration a two-day extravaganza.
Alternatively, there’s the option of choosing a completed separate date when the anniversary is ‘observed’. I mean, hey, it’s good enough for the Queen, so why not you too?
And this option isn’t just available to those Feb 29 knot-tie-ers - there’s no rule to say that anyone can’t observed their anniversary on a date of their choosing. One good reason would be if the anniversary occurs close to some other major event, and you’d rather space out the celebrations through the year. After all, a significant number of weddings happen in January, not long after the Christmas/New Year period.
(Speaking for myself, I have Christmas, my birthday, New Year’s, and my wedding anniversary, all inside a 10-day stretch!)
Not that the marking of an anniversary need be an ‘extravaganza’ in any case, and building up an expectation of such can invite troubles of its own. Even the gifting of presents is an extremely optional thing, and if the only reason you’re giving gifts to each other is because you feel you ought to, then you might want to remind yourselves of what marking the day is really all about. There’s no right or wrong way to have an anniversary - the only thing that’s important is that both of you talk about it and end up on the same page about what you want to do.
Well, I thought this was going to be a post talking about Leap Year weddings but, like a three-year-old flowergirl at a wedding, it wandered off-course in a delightful way. In summary: Get married when you want to. Celebrate the anniversary of your getting married when you want to.
(And even if your wedding wasn’t on the 29th of February, you still don’t need to buy anniversary presents each year if you don’t want to. Just make sure your partner is with you about that one cos, you know, everyone likes presents! :) )
Photo by JOSHUA COLEMAN