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i always give him some sort of little trip/getaway for christmas (usually a weekend or couple of nights somewhere), and go big for his birthday in march, so by the time our anniversary comes around in may, the budget is blown. we've decided to stick to sentimental for the anniversary.

we do the traditional gifts - it's actually fun to try to come up with something! last year was our first anniversary, so for paper, i typed up our vows (we wrote our own) in a pretty font and printed those, and then got an 8x10 of our first kiss printed. i made a little triptych, and it hangs in our bedroom. it was fun to read our vows out loud a year later. it made us both cry.

@lemondrop: jealous!

We went in together and bought a gift we could share - a print of photographs spelling out our last name. It's in out family room so we always see it. Paper!

@photojane: It was so much fun- it was kind of a last minute decision, we spent most of our first year TTC without success, so we decided we needed a vacation.

It made money tight for the rest of the year, but was so worth it, our LO came 39 (ish) weeks and 1 day later

Wow I totally don't remember...

I gave him concert tickets and a positive pregnancy test.

I took him on a surprise trip to Vegas. We had been talking about going on vacation all winter, but never got around to figuring one out. I found a good deal three weeks before our anniversary and decided to just go ahead and book it! It was a lot of fun!

I got him a print from IndigoNight.com . You tell them the date and geographical location you want and they do a picture of what the night sky looked like with your choice of skylines.
I did the sky the night of our wedding. It was especially apropos because he told me that before the ceremony he'd gone for a walk to clear his head and prepare and was feeling really sad about his family (his parents and sister are dead). Then he looked up in the sky and saw 3 really bright stars and felt a sense of peace and calm.

I got him a travel book about Nova Scotia, PEI and New Brunswick (it's where we are going on vacation this summer). It's easy to find inexpensive paper gifts!

I gave him a book. Not romantic, but it was paper and he loved it.

I got him concert tickets to see his favorite band and then framed a printed lyric from our wedding first dance song (written by his favorite band!)... he loved it

We went to a really nice sushi dinner and stayed at a historic inn after.
As for the gifts, my main gift was an electric tool set and he bought me a speaker set for my iPod - it was both stuff we wanted. But I did a side "paper thing". I made him a set of "coupons", back massages, control of the remote, control of the music in the car, night of dishes/dinner, do his laundry - etc. He loved it!

We didn't really do gifts. But I him a book of reasons why I loved him. I wrote down a reason every single day during our first year why I loved him. He loved it and totally cried. He got me a new cake topper since our original one was ruined when our fridge died one weekend when we were out of town. We got married 4 hours away, so the fact that he drove secretly 8 hours in one day to get one from our cake baker meant so much to me.

We are following the traditional gift guides :). For our 1st anniversary we were on a flight to South Africa. DH bought me a bunch of scrapbooking and watercolor paper and art stuff. I drew him a pic of the two of us.

we actually didn't exchange gifts as we booked a trip to cabo for a week a month before our 1 year!

i do plan on doing something this year, we're going to a dinner at a fancy restaurant downtown and i want to make sure to gift him something... trying to stay away from baby-related things because that seems like an obvious choice... but don't have any ideas yet!

We just went out to dinner. We're having a baby and are buying a house...bigger priorities at the moment.

Ferry tickets to mackinac island

@StrawberryBee: Yay! Glad I could help. I love ours. It hangs over our bed