Eleven Years.
Eleven years* seems so much more than ten years – ten years is a nice, neat, clean decade. But eleven years – that’s, like, more.
So it got me thinking: what is left from our wedding?
We’ve moved twice, and bought four vehicles, and created two humans from scratch in those eleven years – surely not much has outlasted all of those Severe Life Upheavals.
And anything that did make it through two rounds of dejunking, packing, not getting stowed in a forgotten box in the basement, unpacking, and keeping was clearly quite crucially important to our daily lives.
For instance, this bag of microwavable popcorn:
I’m thinking that we need to have a special movie date on May 16th to celebrate it’s tenth anniversary of expiration.
Because powdered fake off-brand butter totally gets better with age, right?
But there are a few other things that have remained, aside from our undying passion for each other and nasty popcorn.
There are the typical appliances, like the sad, lonely coffeepot, replaced by the Keurig and therefore relegated to iced tea making duties,
the Waffle Maker that we’ve used twice (or maybe only once), that has been collecting voluminous amounts of dust since 2001,
And of course the family can opener, yellowed with age and botulizing our canned goods with it’s rusty pieces.
(I could have been nice enough to at least wipe it down for you. But I wasn’t.)
Of the Charter Members of the Appliances Clique, the KitchenAid mixer is in the best health, as one would expect.
…although I’m still bitter that they came out with colored Kitchenaids the year after we got married.
The year after!!!
When you move beyond The Appliancehood, there are the towels.
Poor towels.
Although they made beautiful wedding presents and were, in their prime, the most luxurious of creatures, they are now awkwardly bunched, noticeably bleached, and chafe one’s backside like a piece of Oak Bark.
I haven’t looked it up yet, but I’m hoping that year eleven is the year of terrycloth gifts.
Also, our dinnerware has survived, if you can call it that.
Chipped, scratched, and hopelessly dull.
Fortunately, I’ve been slowly collecting my Aunt’s Pottery to replace it,
but seeing as how I don’t have enough to feed my entire family yet, the original plates live on.
One of the more despised pieces of marital antiquity is the paper towel holder.
Stupid paper towel holder.
Or stupid us, for registering for it.
Instead of one of those nice bendy rods that you can push your towel roll over, you have to unscrew it’s large, bulbous end with extraordinarily microscopically ridiculously thin screw threads for at least 90 seconds to be able to replace to roll.
And then screw it back on for another 90 seconds.
Hence, it’s endlessly empty-rolled state.
We’ve wished that paper towel holder dead countless times.
And then there’s the Purple Pumice Foot Scrub.
Chris bought it for our honeymoon, thinking that he could give me a romantic foot massage.
Unfortunately, he didn’t factor in my prohibitively ticklish feet.
Although I’m sure it’s contents are now coagulated enough to re-mortar our kitchen tiles, it still resides hopefully under Chris’ bathroom sink, and as he is packing each year for our anniversary trip, he wistfully asks if “perhaps this year we should bring the Purple Pumice Foot Scrub along?”
(I have hot feet – what can I say?)
But perhaps the most notable relic is the top of our wedding cake.
Lovingly wrapped in Ziploc and hanging out with the frozen peas in our basement freezer.
This may seem a bit on the Hoarders side, but we have a vision.
Nay, even a purpose.
One day, our fossilized freezer is going to be a crucial piece of the puzzle to help archeologists as they study the importance of buttercream in the 21st century society.
…unless temptation overcomes us, and we just can’t help but eat it with our popcorn next month.
* Despite the photographical evidence and the fact that I was still a teenager eleven years ago, I did not grow three inches between then and now. I was just barefoot at our wedding. So, who knows? Maybe I still have some traces of wedding toe jam left over as well.
This was hilarious! We’ll be celebrating our 9th anniversary in October, and all of our stuff pretty much looks the same way (especially the towels). We had that stupid paper towel holder, too, but I got so sick of it that I threw it out one day and bought one of the more convenient slide over the top ones. If only we could write a book for the marrieds-to-be much like the Baby Bargains books that were so useful when I was preparing for my first child!
Oh, half of our dishes have been broken over our 9 years, so we have three or four different sets of 2 or 3. It makes an eclectic statement at dinner parties, no?
Yes! A wedding registry guide would be of the utmost help. The first sentence will be, “None of this really matters because you’re going to hate what you picked out in ten years anyway, as your tastes will change 100%. Also, you will look back on your wedding photos and realize that you would do your wedding completely differently if you were to do it all over again.”
Wow! That’s an interesting array of things you have there. :) I’m sure if I really looked around here, I’d find similar out to date items. We have the same dumb paper towel holder. Happy Anniversary! You two look fabulous for 11 years!
Thank you!
Apparently that paper towel holder got around!! That’s the thing that everyone is saying that they have. Bed Bath and Beyond fleeced us all.
Wow! We’re coming up on the big decade mark and our stuff is similar – what high hopes I had of cultivating some domestic arts skills. It would have been more useful to register for Chick-fil-A gift cards.
That’s a pretty brilliant idea!! Also, for baby presents. New Mommas need lots of CFA.
I was *totally* going to ask you if you’ve grown in the past 11 years!
I wondered if anyone else would notice that strange height difference!
Happy anniversary! We are at 13.5 years, and I bought myself new dishes in January, as ours were a lot broken, not to mention the fact that I seriously registered for CocaCola dishes when we got married..I have no idea.
So… did you replace them with Pepsi dishes?
LOL!
No end to the humor over 11 years—which is probably THE most important thing to hold onto. Best wishes!!!
Thanks! We do have a lot of laughs together – I think we stayed hysterical all weekend!
This was a great post! Preston and I celebrated our 15th anniversary last month (and I was also a teenage bride) and I’ve recently noticed how worn out our things have gotten, and how much my tastes have changed. For this past Christmas, I asked for the Pampered Chef “Dots” plates. Preston bought me a box of 4 each of the dinner and salad plates, and the cereal bowls, with the plan to add to it until we had a “whole” set (or at least a set big enough to serve our family and the occasional guest). Unfortunately, the Dots plates were discontinued in Feb. So I’m also still using my very antiquated (and not in a good way) Correlle English Ivy dishes mixed in with my hip, new, discontinued Dots plates.
My towels are also bunched and faded and rough. When Harris was in first grade at SMCS, we had to buy them a bath towel to use for rest times. It’s now my favorite towel, because it’s the only nice, soft one we have.
We’ve been through 3 coffee pots (and only one of us drinks coffee) and 2 or 3 can openers. I love our ugly, but practical and easy-to-use paper towel holder.
Your paper towel holder would make a good weapon in case you ever have a home intruder….
Oh no!! That is the saddest. Can you get the rest of your plates on clearance or anything?
Well we are coming up to 34 years in Oct. and I our list of vehicles, homes (8 we bought, 4 rented and 13 moves…one house twice) etc: etc: would be waaaay took looooong. I think every 20 years we should be given a shower to get new things…don’t you agree?
Oh definitely. For sure.
Wow! You get more beautiful as each year goes by! (in a non-stalkerish way of course haha) That’s pretty amazing that you still have popcorn from 11 years ago. And your wedding cake! I’ve never heard of someone keeping their wedding cake.
Aw, thanks!!
It’s tradition around here to eat your wedding cake topper on your first anniversary.
It is not, however, tradition to keep it in your freezer if it tastes awful and you can’t stand eating it.
Ohmygoodness, you guys were practically babies when you got married! :) Congratulations on eleven years – here’s to fifty more!
I was, but Chris was already old.
19 and almost 25, to be exact.
Congrats on your anniversary! We kept our wedding cake too, however, after the one year anniversary we decided to throw it out. We just didn’t care for it to begin with so a year later had not improved its taste one bit! We should have saved the groom’s cake instead. Oh, and you should do what I did with our paper towel holder, relegate it to the laundry room and buy you a new one for the kitchen. HomeGoods has great prices on nice, easy to use paper towel holders. ;-)
We hated it originally, too!! Which makes me wonder why we did keep it. We tend to be a bit too extreme on the sentimental side.
Happy Anniversary! I hope that your day was great! My mom made the comment when we were planning our wedding that on your tenth anniversary people should throw you another shower because that is about the time when you need to replace everything you got for your wedding . . . we are about to celebrate year 9 and I am going to remind her about that b/c we could use a new set of pots and pans! :)
Happy early anniversary!
Yes, and you realize sometime in between year one and ten that your tastes have totally changed.
Happy Anniversary!!!! My goodness, you and Chris look FAB for 11 years!! Scott and I just look rather bedraggled….
I’m happy to report that our 2 sets of dishes are intact after almost 11 years…but the vacuum is on its last leg and the towels are slowly getting replaced as well. I’m missing some teaspoons to our original flatware., but otherwise thats intact!
I think the things we’ve gone thru the most have been glasses and kitchen towels! I finally threw out the last of the “original” group of kitchen towels earlier in the year…they were SO gross and stained!
I totally think everyone needs another shower after 10 years! We should make that happen!! :)
Hope yall had a great weekend!!
Yes! We could have a dual shower – that would be fun!
What a fun post! That paper towel holder would drive me CRAZY. You’re a better person than I for not selling it at a yard sale to some unsuspecting individual and then running out and buying a new one.
When we celebrate 11 years (still 7 years away) I hope we no longer have the floral ceramic deviled egg platter that someone thought would be useful to us.
I ditto the movie night with the expired popcorn AND that cake.
How many stores did you attempt to return the floral ceramic deviled egg holder?
We had a few gifts that we resorted to searching the internet for their origins … and that was in 2001!! Needless to say, we weren’t very successful.
Ok please explain this Chick-fil-A concept, we don’t have that here but it sounds fascinating!!
Chick-Fil-A is the only – the ONE AND ONLY – worthwhile fast food in America. They have the most delicious, fresh, juicy chicken strips and chicken sandwiches. They also have delightfully delicious waffle fries.
If you ever come to America, make room to try Chick-Fil-A.
We are coming up on our 13th anniversary in July, and we still have towels that we we received as presents that we HAVE NEVER USED. We got soooo many towels. Apparently that was a very popular gift in 1999. It’s really a wonder they aren’t dry-rotted yet.
Feel free to ship some to me. Anytime.
We celebrate 23 years on Easter (April 8) and we still have towels. I am starting to use them now though. They are white – I didn’t want them to get dingy. :-)
April 8
Wow. That is impressive!!! Congratulations on using your wedding presents!! ;)
This is such a fun post! The two of you have not aged at all in 11 years!
We had that paper towel holder too, and Chris (my husband) got sick of hearing me complain about it, so for my birthday, he bought me a new one where the towels slide on and off (he bought me other things too but I can’t remember what they were!) I tell you, the new paper towel holder is LIFE CHANGING!
:)
Oh, that is WONDERFUL!! Now I know what I need to ask for for my birthday.
11 years does sound like more than 10 ;). you got married on my daughter’s birthday – awesome! we’re going on 8 years this summer and my towels look worse and my dishes are pretty similar. i have a very similar paper towel holder too. they are kinda dumb things. and i can’t believe you’ve waited to eat that cake. we gobbled ours up on our first anniversary! happy anniversary!
We both hated our cake. It was nasty even when it was fresh!
We are hitting 11 years this year too. We still have our lovely white kitchen aid mixer and some various junks. The top of my wedding cake I very deliberately left in my parents freezer and never looked at again because frozen cake is a sad and disgusting thing.
Hmm, now I have the urge to go thru my stuff and find out exactly what the various junks are…
I wonder if your parents still have your cake??
I assumed the photographer had positioned Chris on a higher step in the wedding photo. Thanks for clarifying. :-) I love thinking back, no matter what I’m thinking back to. Thanks for sharing this.
At first I thought so too, then I remembered that I was barefoot!
Here’s a suggestion for your wonderful paper towel holder. Use it for a base for one of theses:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/83306751/new-2011-large-mannequin-dress-form-e
Oh, and for heaven’s sake, go buy a new paper towel holder!!!!!!!
Oh. Wow. Now that WOULD be impressive!! ;)