October 2021 Date Jar: “Get tickets to an amusement park. See how many rides you can hit in a day.”
October 30, 2021
What’s the ‘Date Jar’?
Have you ever heard someone say that the fun ends when you get married? What about ‘ball and chain jokes’ or advice to ‘sow your wild oats’ before you get married and have to ‘settle down’? Our culture has a tendency to portray marriage in such a negative light. We know marriage comes with it’s many challenges, but we believe you can keep the butterflies alive long after you say “I do”!
When we got engaged, our friends gave us a jar filled with date ideas so that we could continue ‘dating’ even after we got married. Now, after being married over 5 years, we think about that jar and understand how truly important it is to set aside intentional time to have fun and try new things together. We believe that continuing to date after your wedding day is essential to building a strong, lasting marriage. Because of that, we gift all of our couples with a date jar filled with 52 different date ideas, some that we have personally already enjoyed, and some new ideas that we have always wanted to try together!
As we encourage couples just beginning their forever together, we thought it would be fun to share our dates to inspire all our friends, families, and couples to continue pursuing each other in marriage.
Between travel and weddings, we had A LOT going on this summer. And in the mix of all the craziness, we celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary! But because of our packed calendar, we decided to postpone the celebration a couple of months.
We knew we were going to have a couple of days to hang out back in California before our family trip, so Beau surprised me and planned a weekend at Disneyland just for the two of us. Disneyland has always held a special place in our hearts because it was there under the fireworks during our first summer dating 9 years ago that we said “I love you” for the first time 🙂 Since that date, we have made many a trip to the park and it has become one of our favorite places to go!
We have our favorite foods, rides, and things to do every time we go, so the whole experience has become very nostalgic for us. But this trip was our first time ever visiting Disneyland during the Halloween season! The whole park was decorated for fall everywhere we turned and there were exclusive Halloween treats at every food cart and restaurant.
We were able to hit all of our favorite rides, and with it being almost 90 degrees outside, we absolutely had to do all the water attractions. Of course I made Beau sit in front of me on Splash Mountain so I could use him as a human shield, and he got absolutely SOAKED!! He looked like he had jumped in a swimming pool and had to wring out his clothes as we walked to the Haunted Mansion 😀 He was much too grumpy to take a photo after the ride, but he got decently soaked the next day on Grizzly Rapids and begrudgingly allowed me to document a before and after of that one 🙂 (note his shorts changing color in the photos below haha!)
One of my favorite things about Disney is how kind all the employees are. Everyone who works there goes above and beyond to make every guest feel ‘at home’ in the parks. When we arrived, the concierge asked us if we were there to celebrate anything, so we let them know we planned the trip for our 5th wedding anniversary. They gave us little buttons to wear and everywhere we went employees congratulated us and said “happy anniversary!”
This was the perfect way to celebrate a big milestone in our marriage and we are already looking forward to our next Disney vacation. We will probably have to wait a few years though so we can work off all the treats we ate!
I made this Disney Instagram Reel with lots of fun videos from our trip 🙂 And for another fun date idea, check out this date jar post from earlier this year!
