Our first year wedding anniversary was on October 22nd. On that day one year prior, we brought out all of our friends and family to one of our favorite bars and surprised them all with an announcement that we were actually having our wedding ceremony right then and there. We were thrilled not only to host a different kind of wedding, but were looking for ways to invite all of our friends without having them all show up. I think our preliminary guest list was about 350 not including +1's. Hubs has a big family, but not that big. We were getting carried away and I didn't want to leave anyone out. Now, I can actually say that I invited most all of my facebook friends and family members, but only had to deal with the 150 that wanted to go to a wedding shower/going away party for Hubs. Sheer genius.
Also genius was the fact that I now had two anniversary dates to celebrate. One being our courthouse wedding and the other being our surprise wedding. So we spent the better part of this first year trying to come up with what would become the first real Dan and Sarah Callis Family Tradition. We decided that our courthouse wedding anniversary would be the traditional anniversary, and we would celebrate with the annual themes and flowers associated with the year. First year being paper, this was pretty easy, and if you haven't read the blog about that anniversary, you really should, because it might go down in history as the best one ever.
For our surprise wedding anniversary, we wanted to do something unique, just like our unconventional ceremony. When it occurred to us that we should just keep the tradition going. That we should surprise at least one person every year on October 22nd in honor of the most fun surprise day in our history. Brilliant.
But then, we remembered that we're in Moscow. And our anniversary was in a day. Who were we going to surprise and with what? I mean, we surprise ourselves every day by buying milk instead of buttermilk (kafir). Or by buying weird black olive flavored mayonnaise instead or regular mayonnaise. How on earth are we gonna catch anyone by surprise in a city where we live in a constant state of surprise ourselves? Most of our new friends know what kind of mayonnaise and milk to buy, and are WAY more savvy about ex-pat life. How on earth are we going to pull this one off?
In the end, it was a simple solution. No one in Moscow is ever expecting a cake. Baking here is a real bitch. I've heard all the excuses. "I can't figure out my oven,""the flour and sugar are different," "chickens here aren't happy and give us awful eggs..." You name it. And frankly, I believe it all. I've ruined every single thing I've ever tried to bake and roughly half the things I try and cook on the stovetop. (although I have mastered the meatloaf.) So, we took a trip to our new favorite store, Stockmann's which keeps a good amount of not only cake mixes with English instructions (something you don't think about until you buy a bunch of brownie mixes in Dubai only to find the instructions in Arabic...) but also frosting!
So, we baked the best yellow cake from a box, topped it with some chocolate icing and headed out to our friend's apartment down the street.
About halfway there, I think it hit us both that our new friends are not familiar with our somewhat eccentric qualities. You don't really consider yourself eccentric when you're surrounded by equally eccentric friends. It took awhile, but on this long walk to start a new tradition celebrating our marriage, we had to come to grips with the fact that we were in a new place. That we would either embrace these slightly off-beat, maybe a little weird qualities that kept us so entertained between the two of us for so long, or we would change. We were about to have our first test in grown-upness really. Funny that it took this long for it to happen.
As usual, the walk was long and full of nagging doubts about our quirks and crazy ideas. But I have to go on record now and say that I wouldn't have survived this long without those quirks. Not only my own, but Hubs' as well. He keeps me laughing and sane and hopeful and content and loved. All with his crazy ideas and witty banter. What a great year we've had. And what great years await us.
We may have woken up our friends, but I think they enjoyed a hand-delivered cake/mini anniversary celebration. And it felt so much better to be in the company of people who strengthen our marriage, our purpose and our sanity while we're so far from home. It takes so many more than just two in order to make a marriage work and every October 22nd from here on out we want to celebrate those people. We wished this year that we could have celebrated with many, many more dear friends who have been there for us, but we only had a day to plan and Hubs had to be back at work the next day.
There's always next year...
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