Long-distance anniversary ideas that aren't a video call
By James Auble · · 3 min read
- anniversaries
- long-distance relationships
- date ideas
- gift ideas
An anniversary is hard when you live apart. The usual version needs the same room: dinner out, a walk, a hand to hold across the table. A video call on the night can feel like any other Tuesday with a candle on the desk.
What helps is giving the day a shape and leaving each of you with something afterward, so it doesn't vanish when the screen goes dark. These are six ways to do that.
Send a box that is waiting on the day
Post something early enough that it's sitting on their doorstep when the day comes, and write "open on the day" on the lid. Shipping dates slip, so a week ahead is safer than three days. The box can be small: a ticket stub from your first trip, a printed photo, a handwritten note, a scarf that smells like your place. They get to hold something you touched.
Cook the same dinner
Pick a recipe, shop for it separately and cook it with the call open. You end up eating the same meal at the same time, which is more than most long-distance dates manage. If your time zones are far apart, one of you can have dinner while the other has breakfast. Make pancakes. Nobody will mind.
Build a timeline together
Start a shared album or document with one entry for every month you've been together. Each of you adds the best moment of the month, and you read them aloud on the night. Dates you'd half forgotten come back, and the two of you end up with a small history you can add to next year.
Write the letter you'd say out loud
Each of you writes one page about the past year: what surprised you, what you're grateful for, what you want next. (If a page feels too long to start, writing a short vow is a good warm-up.) Don't swap them early. Open them together on the call and read your own aloud, or let the other person read it to you. A page like that gets kept far longer than a text, and writing it makes you say things you'd usually leave to a look.
Put the next visit on the calendar
An anniversary looks backward, so give it something ahead as well. Pick a date you'll be in the same room again and mark it on a calendar you both see. More habits like this are in how to keep the spark alive. If you can't choose a day yet, agree on the month when you'll choose one. Even a month on the calendar is better than "someday."
Leave something you can both go back to
Most of the ideas above are one evening. Something that stays is harder to arrange from far away, but it's what you'll want in a year.
A lock on EverLoveLocks is engraved with your initials and a date and hangs on a bridge you can both open from your phones. It doesn't need either of you to travel, and nobody cuts it off. A Prestige or Eternity lock can carry a vow of up to 140 characters, public or private, and a card scheduled to land in their inbox on the day. An Eternity lock also sends you both an email each year on your anniversary, with a link back to the lock (prices and tiers). The day comes around with something already waiting.
Make whatever you choose specific to the two of you. A cheap gift that only you would think of lands better than an expensive one that anyone could have sent.