Yup, our third annual Wedding Week is upon us thanks to our upcoming anniversary this Wednesday. And it’s hard to believe that yet another year has flown by, especially since our DIY backyard wedding (held right here at Casa Petersik on 7.7.07) still feels like it was yesterday.
Of course most of you have already read all about our wedding by clicking that tab under our blog header, and we’ve used Wedding Week I and Wedding Week II to describe things like our courtship, our engagement, and our honeymoon in detail. We even divulged home related DIY projects, like how I dyed my wedding dress…
…and how we commemorated our nuptials with a shadow box filled with wedding paraphernalia. We also mentioned some fun anniversary traditions, like when we recreated the same meal that our guests enjoyed at our wedding for our first anniversary…
… and went out to eat at the restaurant where we had our rehearsal dinner for our second anniversary. In fact, here’s a quick and dirty rundown of all the wedding related posts that we’ve already covered:
- Here’s our big wedding page full of DIY details
- Here’s how I dyed my wedding dress so I can wear it again & again
- Here’s how we met, fell in love, and got hitched
- Here’s the story of John’s proposal
- Here’s the play by play of our Alaskan honeymoon (with Burger!)
- Here’s how we created our wedding shadow box
- Here’s how our wedding beverages were reimagined as hostess gifts
- Here’s our little anniversary tradition
- Here’s the place where we almost said “I do” (before switching to our backyard)
And since we’ve already touched on a whole lotta wedding-related stuff in these posts of yore, we’re doing our best to keep things exciting this time around. This week you can look forward to:
- A fun wedding-themed giveaway (that’s also for non-engaged & already-married folks)
- A post about how we solve decorating disagreements
- A romantic bedroom mood board for anyone who wants to feather their love nest
- A roundup of DIY home decor that we whipped up to commemorate special moments
- A post about the gifts we exchanged this year
- A post about how we expanded upon our anniversary tradition
Sure, it’s a little bit self-indulgent and some of the deets are a tad unrelated to home improvement, but we’d like to think that our relationship is an important part of what makes Young House Love tick. So we hope you’ll enjoy this week’s lovey-dovey detour with us (don’t worry, we’ll still be dishing out some of the usual home-related stuff too). As we like to say so often around these parts, stay tuned…
Michele Daggar says
Congratulations on your anniversary! The years fly by don’t they? Hope baby Clara is doing well. Love the pictures in her weekly onesie!
Sarah says
no complaints here! happy (early) anniversary! i hope you two get a few moments alone to celebrate even with precious Clara! :)
Carmen says
Congratulations on your anniversary! Wishing you a lifetime of happiness. My husband and I got married on the same day. Yay!!! Will you be celebrating it with Clara or is grandma coming over to babysit? I am sure she would love to! Have fun you two! An aside question, what do you do with all your baby pictures? Any creative ideas (how to store them?)? My friend just had a baby and she is desperate and doesn’t know what to do with the hundreds of baby pictures that she has already taken. Have a great week!
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Carmen,
We’re the people who took our dog on our honeymoon! Of course Clara will be joining in on the anniversary fun! As for storing photos, we’re taking weekly photos (check out our Flickr page to see them) and plan to get a book of all 52 of them at the end of the year (printed by Snapfish or Apple). Of course we also have s regular photo album that we’re filing with chronological photos as she grows and does cute things (which is pretty much every day). Here’s a post about how we sort and store our photos in general. Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Tiffini S. says
Happy anniversary, you crazy youngsters! I think I speak for us all when I say “We’ve enjoyed the ride probably almost as much as you!”
Michelle says
It was your beautiful wedding that brought me to your blog in the first place! :)
mary v says
congrats! what a year yall have had! btw do you happen to have a picture of the original wedding dress you bought? the one you planned on wearing till you found the other one that you liked better? just out of plain curiosity.
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Mary V,
Boo! I just flipped back through my pre wedding pics and I don’t seem to have any photos of the first dress. It was flouncier, it had a lace overlay like this dress, but short. I really did love it at the time, but since I got it nearly a year before we walked down the aisle (and picked up the dress I wore just 48 hours before the ceremony) I must have really been longing for something simpler and more sleek. Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Gloria says
Happy anniversary! This Wednesday is our anniversary too — our 10th!! And we had our first child right around the 3-year mark as well. Have fun celebrating — love your blog!!
Carolina (caroleena) says
I love weddings! And I love your blog! This should be great. My parents were married on 7/7/77 and I was born that same date, 7/7, several years later! Happy Anniversary!
Jessica @ How Sweet says
Wow I am SO impressed!! You dyed your dress?! That is amazing!
Jenn says
Happy Anniversary!! We also got married on 7/7/07:)It was kinda interesting because when we picked the date we never evens thought of the 7/7/07 till we had the church and hall booked so it came as an excited surprise when we thought of it. Something I like to do special for our anniversary is recreating the meal that we had for our wedding. So I’m looking forward to doing that for my hubby again on Wednesday:)Hope you guys have a wonderful day also!!
YoungHouseLove says
That’s funny! We actually picked the date because it was the exact 2 year anniversary of when we started dating- so we said “if it’s a Saturday, let’s do it” and it was. It’s pretty amusing to think that thousands of other people had the same idea (for many different reasons). Love was in the air that day…
xo,
s
Amanda @fromparriswithlove says
Happy Anniversary! I actually stumbled across your blog because of your DIY wedding. My fiance and I are planning a back yard wedding since we’re both pretty simple and can’t fathom spending tens of thousands of dollars, even if it is a once lifetime thing. Not that I don’t think you shouldn’t if you’ve got the means to do so. But I know for sure now that my back yard wedding will be just as beautiful and fun as something that could cost more than twice as much!
And the dress dying idea is great. Mine is a 60 dollar cotton dress, and I don’t make a habit of wearing a whole lot of white. I might have to do this down the road!
LizzieBeth says
Happy Anniversary!!
Next week is my wedding week– with my actual wedding on July 17th!
LB
YoungHouseLove says
How exciting! Good luck and happy wedding!!!
xo,
s (& j)
Pam @diy Design Fanatic says
Congratulations on your Anniversary! I love that you had your beautiful wedding in your backyard! I hadn’t ever gone to the tab with your house & yard tour, so I’m glad you mentioned it. I am so jealous of your home and yard – After living in a BIG house for 10 years we are ready for a change to something a little more manageable. Would love one story with a basement like yours and still would love a big wooded lot ( I love gardening)
Handy Man, Crafty Woman says
Happy Anniversary. I had so much fun looking at your do it yourself wedding photos. LOVED the photo booth! wish I knew about that for ours! (going on lucky year #13 here).
Kate says
happy wedding anniversary for the 7th guys!! Our 7-week anniversary is on Friday!!! :) We had a spectacular day and my only regret is that we can’t do it every single day!
Ludmila {creamylife.com} says
Happy anniversary, guys! Wishing you many many more!!! xoxo
Lydia says
Looking forward to this week! Happy anniversary, Young House Lovers! :)
Genie says
Nice dye idea for your dress! I realize it had some synthetic fabric, but for plant-based materials (cotton, hemp, linen, etc.), try these dyes: http://www.bestdye.com/ They are definitely the BEST; Rit doesn’t compare!
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Genie,
Thanks so much for the tip! We’ll have to try it sometime!
xo,
s
Claire says
Just celebrated our 1st a couple of weeks ago so I’m definitely still in the anniversary mood. I’m looking forward to a week of anniversary and wedding related posts! We are in transition right now home-wise so anything that won’t tempt me to run out and redecorate or make extra things to move is a good thing.
Paige says
Happy Anniversary! We’re celebrating our first anniversary on the 25th. Hooray for July weddings!
Your DIY plan was so creative and inspiring. A friend of mine is getting married next year and I sent all of your posts along to her.
Donna Hadley says
I never get tired of looking at your wedding photos. It makes me want to have a simple inexpensive wedding! Happy Anniversary!
Lauren says
Congratulations and thank you for sharing your life with all of us. You always bring a smile to my life just by being you. I wish you the best. (My Mom’s birthday is the 7th…84 yrs young.)
Carey says
Congrats on #3!!! You two are just adorable. :) LOVE the wedding pics!
Meghan says
Congrats on the upcoming anniversary. I just looked at your honeymoon blog from Alaska. I just got married in Girdwood last weekend and grew up in Anchorage so your photos were fun!
Mary Clark says
I’d really like a “C” picture for my house but don’t see them in your “store.” What’s up? We need a “C”!!!
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Mary,
Thanks for your interest! Everything in our shop is limited edition, so we no longer sell monogram prints. So sorry!
xo,
s
Clara says
A great post with wonderful links. I’ll be exploring these for a while. Thanks!
Xanthe says
Congratulations on your 3rd wedding anniversary. Its our 3rd anniversary tomorrow, the day was picked for the same reason as you, the 5th anniversary of when we started dating! We have a baby due on 01/01/2011 so it’s all exciting. Looking forward to the rest of the week. Isn’t it leather for your third anniversary? i remember it’s paper and cotton for the first two. Take care xx
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Xanthe,
Yup, leather is the traditional gift (and we read somewhere that crystal was the modern gift, whatever that means). We love looking those things up but they rarely dictate our gifts for each other, although we did both stick to paper for our first anniversary.
xo,
s
Anna says
Hey, Wednesday’s my anniversary too! We’ll be married 20 years. Happy Anniversary!
Melissa says
Hi John & Sherry!
I have read your blog for a long time. And I love it. And I am just starting my own blog journey & linked to you guys as a favorite in my “Homemaking” area on my blog reader.
I just thought I would let you know!
Enjoy your wedding week!
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks so much Melissa! We’re blushing over here.
xo,
s (& j)
Amanda@Our humble A{Bowe}d says
We too had a backyard wedding just over 4 years ago. I love your pics. I wish we would have been able to use real plates and such, but it just didn’t work out. I did just post pics of our DIY centerpieces: http://ourhumbleabowed.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/garage-sale-thrift-store-and-hand-me-downs-oh-my/
Sarah @ Long Legs Healthy Life says
Hi Sherry and John! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love your site! It has become my go-to reference for any home or diy questions I have. Congrats on your 3rd anniversary, I loved reading your wedding recaps, so original and creative!
Krista Haws says
Happy Anniversary you two! Hope you have a great day!!
Andrea P says
Happy 3rd Anniversary!
What were your gifts to each other for years 1 & 2?
YoungHouseLove says
Well, the first year I hunted down all of our old keys and made this framed display of them for John and he followed the “paper” tradition for the first year and ordered me adorable Young House Love business cards from here (they each had photos of different rooms of the house on the front and my info on the back). For the second year we got each other our new organic mattress (it was a big purchase that we saved up for together). Hope it helps!
xo,
s
m says
Boy! do I have a lot of catching up to do…how fun!!!!
m ^..^
Destiny says
Fabulous post … loved it so much!Happy, happy everything!
A says
Happy Anniversary! I have to admit, I look forward to your wedding week every year.
This is a little off topic but I googled the name Young House Love to get to your site and another site with the web address onehousestory.com came up. When I clicked on it, everything on the site was the same but I thought it was odd. Just thought I’d let you know.
YoungHouseLove says
Hey A,
So funny that onehousestory.com came up on your search. Back when we were changing our name last July, that was one of the URLs we bought on a whim. We didn’t end up using it, but figured we’d redirect the traffic if anyone happened upon it. So nothing fishy going on this time around!
-John
eyeseepretty says
I think it’s great that you celebrate wedding week and Happy Anniversary! There’s something so engaging about weddings – I’ve been married for eight years and I still buy every issue of Martha Stewart Weddings!
Jen says
I like the wedding posts just as much as the home-improvement and decorating ones. They’re part of the “love” in Young House Love! :) Congrats on your anniversary and can’t wait to read more posts!
Alicia says
I’m glad to hear y’all are including Clara in on your anniversary. We also include our little man in ours. It is the day you became a family, why not share it with your family??
Diane says
You guys are so sweet! Love the wedding pics – when do we get to see pics from the baby shower? :)
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Diane,
Sadly, no baby shower pics will be going up on the ol’ blog (we try to stick to a few subjects that we’ve touched on for the past three years of blogging: namely home improvement, decor stuff and our DIY wedding). We also try to keep our extended family and friends off of the blog out of respect to them, and since all the shower photos feature a lot of people that we know and love, we’ve chosen to keep that intimate event off of the interweb (for our happiness as well, we have to draw the line somewhere). Hope it makes sense!
xo,
s
Barbara says
Well, since I’ve enter the “spinster age” with no prospects in sight, I had to wish you a happy anniversary but bow out of the giveaway week. I mean, a girl can dream, but come on…at 49, I no longer expect to use wedding invitations!!
I hope your anniversary with your “second” baby will be as wonderful as your previous ones with your “first” baby.
“There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife,
confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.”
Homer, Odyssey,
ninth century B.C.
Happy anniversary of the birthday of your love affair.
Kristin says
Congratulations! I’m looking forward to this week’s posts.
We got married on June 5 this year, on June 6 1999 we started dating, but as it was a sunday this year we could not get married on our 11th anniversary. Instead of telling everyone it was just an “auxiliary date”, we said on our invitations that 10 years were enough and we are getting married just in time *before* our 11th anniversary.
And, of course, our wedding was a bit YHL-inspired as well. We also had wine bottles (with flowers in them) and lemons/limes as decoration, and DIYed all the invitations and menu cards.
Aaah, I just can’t stop writing. It was just so great for us! Happy wedding week!
Michelle says
Hi John and Sherry!
I just found your blog by googling “backyard wedding” and I am hooked! I just recently got engaged and am in that stage where I am looking up all kinds of different wedding ideas. Needless to say, being in this newly engaged mode has me just loving your wedding posts! I know that you already have your wedding week planned out but the one topic I was wondering a bit about was your music. I saw that you had a family friend play the guitar (totally cool-is he a professional musician?) and you used an Ipod. Did you make specific “wedding playlists” or did you just hook up your Ipods and let them play? I really like this idea because I know I definitely don’t want a band and a cheesy DJ isn’t my style either. I may have to sell some people on the Ipod idea so if you had any suggestions on how to make that work, I’d appreciate it!
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Michelle,
Congrats on your engagement! As for John’s best friend Kevin who played the guitar at our wedding, he has always had an interest in music and he even composes in his spare time so he was the perfect choice! And when it came to the iPod wedding playlist, John and I sat down together and picked about 5 hours of music that we thought would be perfect for our wedding (a mixture of new and old so everyone who attended would recognize some of the tunes and feel festive right along with us). Worked like a charm! Hope it helps.
xo,
s
D says
Happy Anniversary!
I’m excited for wedding week!
jennifer says
As with many others…your backyard wedding was the reason I came to find your blog…so really looking forward to the Big 3rd Anniversary post. Thanks for letting us in on so much of your lives…you’ve been more of an inspiration than you’ll know!
Mrs Soup says
It’s always so wonderful to see a couple that are in a good relationship. You two are the soul behind the tips, and that’s what is important.
So please! Keep it up! I love your anniversary almost as much as I love my own (5 years at the end of July).
kelly says
your wedding is so inspiring!!!
http://www.kellyloves.wordpress.com
April in CT says
I just need to know one thing: What all is in that pasta salad?! It looks so good, especially with the heatwave we’re having today! lol
Happy anniversary to you guys! The love you two share for each other is so evident and it really, really makes me smile! :)
YoungHouseLove says
Hey April!
That’s pasta salad we picked up at our local grocery store (Ukrop’s at the time, now Martin’s) so I can’t tell you exactly what was in it. It wasn’t the exact pasta salad we had at our wedding, but it was pretty close – and it was delicious. Something like pasta, mozarella and sun-dried tomatoes. Mmmm…
Hope that helps!
-John
April in CT says
I’ll just study that picture a little and guess! lol I thought I saw some precious and creamy mozzarella in there. Thanks, John!