{two year anniversary}

Today marks our 2-year wedding anniversary which blows my mind even now as I write it since it feels like a week ago that we were loading up a Uhaul full of wedding DIYs to head out to the desert and celebrate with 130 of our closest friends and family.  Even though we are only 2 years in as far as our wedding date goes, Chris and I were actually together for almost 10 years before making it official. While I certainly don't claim to know everything it takes to make a successful marriage, I do know that every year we have been together has been even better than the one before.  If we can keep that up for many years to come then I'd like to think we've got it figured out.

Last year Chris surprised me with a weekend trip to Palm Springs to celebrate our first anniversary (you can see a little video I made from that trip here)  This year (in addition to our anniversary gift tradition) we are going decidedly more low-key with a dinner tomorrow night at one our favorite places in Chicago.

    

{2nd anniversary art}

We will be celebrating our 2nd wedding anniversary next week and in keeping with the tradition we started last year we started searching around for another piece of art to add to our collection.   We chose to go with a large photo print from our wedding day for our first anniversary which you can see see right here.  This year, I came across these amazing palm leaf watercolor prints from The Aestate and thought one of them could be perfect!  The more I tried to decide which of the four variations of the Beverly print series was the best the more it occurred to me that it could be amazing to grab up three of them to create a sort of large triptych piece.  I also briefly entertained the idea of having them print us one extra large one like this, but the custom framing cost behind something that large is atrocious (over $600!!!).  We picked up white frames for these from Ikea and depending where we move to we could always switch them out for the walnut finish frame or even paint them!

{one year anniversary trip video}

One of the best decisions we made with our wedding was deciding at the last minute to splurge on videography.  I love to watch our highlight video every now and then because it completely transports me back to that day.

Our DLSR camera actually takes great high quality video and I have been meaning to shoot more with it as well as learn how to edit it.  The trip to The Parker Palm Springs that Chris surprised me with for our anniversary seemed like the perfect chance to try it out!  Here's the video we put together using footage from both our DLSR camera and my Iphone then edited in iMovie.   After figuring out the basics of the video editing software, putting together the video was surprisingly quick and easy.  While I definitely have some room for improvement on both shooting video footage and editing it, having this great little memory of our trip definitely motivates me to want to make more videos of future trips.

Our 4 day trip to LA and The Parker Palm Springs was a much needed trip to warmer weather to escape the dismal spring that Chicago is having.  This video sums up our trip which was basically comprised of drinking cocktails, laying by the pool, drinking champagne, playing lawn games and drinking more cocktails - oh and celebrating our first year of marriage!

{one year}

Yesterday marked our one year wedding anniversary!  I know it's cliche, but I really cannot believe how fast this entire has flown by.  I have heard that people say the first year of marriage is the hardest, but ever since I have been with Chris every single year has proved to be even better than the one previous with this year being the best one yet.  Chris surprised me with trip to California where we are currently celebrating our anniversary at one my favorite places, The Parker Palm Springs.  The Parker happens to be where we spent our wedding night as well as my bachelorette party so it holds a really special place in my heart.

Re-live all the wedding posts here or the video here.