How Celebrating Wedding Anniversaries Has Made Our Marriage Stronger

By Nkem Akinsoto

Atala and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary on Valentine's day back in February. It was a couple of weeks after I returned from my 3months stint in Nigeria, and I remember leaving some threads hanging loose and a few people asking me to extend my stay for a couple more weeks so I could tie them all up neatly before returning to the United States. I told them plainly, not gonna happen. I care a lot about succeeding in my business and will make allowances on how it would affect my time with Atala and thus our relationship, but my wedding anniversary is very important to me.


It all started on our first wedding anniversary. We had followed the tradition I found out while getting ready for the wedding, that the top tier of the cake is often kept and is brought out by the couple on their first wedding anniversary. That sounded great to me. None of my previous relationships had ever crossed the one year mark and here I was getting married at over 30 after having thought all the while that I would never find "the one".  So though I knew I really loved him, I was still scared that my short tolerance fuse would blow and I would want out sooner rather than later.

So as we set out to our honeymoon, the top tier of the cake remained in the freezer. Atala travelled back to the US with it, and I joined him a couple of weeks later. Living together as man and wife is no cake walk, but we remained loved up even after we had those deep discussions that follow big blowouts. Our cake continued chilling in the freezer. A week to our one year anniversary, I was like wow, we made it!

For the first anniversary, I printed out new personalized wedding vows - the bishop who officiated our wedding used the generic ones - and we pledged them to each other. We ate our cake, and a tradition was born. We would always mark our wedding anniversaries. And I tell you, it has made our marriage stronger and healthier.

There are a lot of jokes abour one spouse or the other forgetting their wedding anniversary; but I take them really as jokes. Really, who would forget. If you set the date and got married that day, surely it is worth remembering. For us, Valentine's Day is a distraction but it also deepens our feelings of love on that day. It is also a time for us to think of our original vows, and if necessary, make new ones that are in keeping with the growth and development of our marriage.

Anniversaries are great for spending quality time with your partner. If possible you both need to discuss how the marriage is treating you both thus far and if you need to rekindle the fire of your romantic relationship. This is really important where the burdens of life are pushing you away from each other. Gifts are not imperative but they are great as a way to show appreciation of all the love, care, and joys received from one another, as well as the acceptance and encouragement given in other aspects of life.

For our fifth wedding anniversary, one of the things we did was to take some commemorative studio pictures and I've shared some of them below.