My friend Megan recently lost her grandma.
And at the funeral, sitting in a room full of people who had loved this woman for decades, she heard a story about her grandparents’ marriage that she had never heard before.
She shared it on our Instagram account and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
A story so simple, so small, and so quietly powerful that it stopped her in her tracks.
It was a monthly anniversary tradition — one tiny thing her grandpa did on the same day of every single month, for 66 years.
And once you hear it, you’re going to want to start doing it too.
The Marriage Hack That Lasted 66 Years
Megan’s grandparents were married on June 12, 1952.
Two people with absolutely no idea what the next six-and-a-half decades were going to hand them.
And somewhere in those early years, her grandpa decided something.
Their anniversary landed on the 12th.
So every single month, on the 12th, he was going to do something a little extra for her.
Not a big production. Not an expensive gift. Not a whole weekend away.
Just something — a small, deliberate reminder that he adored her.
- Sometimes it was flowers.
- Sometimes it was a love note.
- Sometimes it was a treat she loved.
It was different every time. It was usually little. And it never, ever stopped.
The 12th of January. The 12th of February. The 12th of March.
Through babies and mortgages and moves and hard years and good years and everything in between.
They were married 66 years before she passed away.
That’s roughly 792 times he stopped what he was doing and said, without saying it: You are still the one.
Seven hundred and ninety-two small moments. Almost none of them expensive or elaborate.
And all of them adding up to a woman who spent her entire adult life knowing — not guessing, not hoping — knowing she was cherished.
What Is a Monthly Anniversary Tradition?
A monthly anniversary tradition is a small, repeatable act of love you do on the same date every month — the date you got married.
If you were married on the 12th, the 12th of every month becomes your day. Married on the 3rd? The 3rd is yours. Married on the 30th? You’ve got 11 chances a year to celebrate.
The rules are gloriously simple:
- Same date, every month. Predictable on purpose.
- Small is the point. If it’s big, you’ll quit by March.
- Mix it up. The date repeats; the gesture doesn’t have to.
- No scorekeeping. You’re not trading favors. You’re giving love freely.
Think of it as a standing appointment with your marriage — one your spouse never has to schedule, request, or hint about.
Why a Tiny Monthly Tradition Works Better Than a Grand Gesture
It’s tempting to think that a marriage this strong must have been built on something dramatic. A big trip. A big gift. A big romantic moment.
Nope. It was built on a Tuesday. And then another Tuesday. And then a Saturday. Over and over for 66 years.
And there’s real research behind why that works so well.
Couples with rituals are measurably happier.
Researchers Ximena Garcia-Rada, Ovul Sezer, and Harvard’s Michael Norton studied couples and their rituals, and found that partners who deliberately keep relationship rituals report greater satisfaction and commitment than couples who don’t.
Garcia-Rada called them “powerful commitment devices” — which is a very academic way of saying: a tradition is a promise you keep making without having to say it out loud.
Small things often beats big things rarely.
After four decades of studying couples, Dr. John Gottman landed on a motto that fits Megan’s grandpa perfectly: small things often.
Gottman describes an “Emotional Bank Account” in every relationship. Every small moment of turning toward your spouse is a deposit. Every missed one is a withdrawal.
A grand gesture once a year is a single big deposit. A monthly tradition is 792 of them.
Guess which balance you’d rather have when life gets hard?
The anticipation is half the gift.
Here’s the sneaky bonus nobody tells you about traditions.
Once your spouse knows the 12th is your day, they start looking forward to it. On the 9th. On the 10th. On the 11th.
You’re not just giving them one good moment a month. You’re giving them something to look forward to twelve times a year, forever.
It survives the seasons when romance usually dies.
Newborn season. Busy work season. Grad school season. Caring-for-a-parent season. The seasons where a real date night feels impossible.
A monthly tradition bends. On a great month it’s a surprise dinner. On a brutal month it’s a sticky note on the bathroom mirror at 11:58 p.m.
Both count. That’s the beauty of it.
How to Start Your Own Monthly Anniversary Tradition
Ready? This takes about four minutes to set up and then it runs for the rest of your life.
1. Claim your number.
Look up your wedding date. Whatever day of the month you got married on — that’s your number.
Or switch it up and pick a different date. Use the day you met, your first date, or the day you got engaged. There’s no rule police here.
2. Set a recurring reminder RIGHT NOW.
Seriously. Stop reading. Open your phone. Create a repeating monthly reminder on your date and title it something that’ll make you smile when it pops up.
Megan’s grandpa did this with nothing but his own memory and a whole lot of devotion. You have a supercomputer in your pocket. You have no excuse. 😉
Pro Tip: Set it for two days before your date, so you have time to grab flowers or write something good.
3. Keep it small enough to survive a bad month.
This is where most people struggle. They start strong in January with a candlelit dinner and a spa gift card, and by April they’ve quietly given up because they set the bar at Olympic height.
Set your baseline at “a note in their bag.” Anything above that is a bonus.
A tradition you actually keep for 30 years beats a spectacular one you keep for 4 months. Every time.
4. Make it about THEM, not about you.
The best monthly gestures aren’t the ones you think are romantic. They’re the ones your spouse feels.
If your husband’s love language is acts of service, a poem is nice — but handling the thing he’s been dreading all week? That’s the whole ballgame. If your wife lights up over words, a hand-written note will beat a gift card every single time.
Not sure which one they are? Start with our guide to date ideas for every love language or how to romance your spouse through their love language.
5. Tell them what you’re doing… or don’t.
Both work!
- Announce it and you get the anticipation factor immediately.
- Say nothing and watch them figure it out around month four. (“Wait… is this because it’s the 12th?”) That moment is magic.
6. Do it even if they never do it back.
We’ll come back to this one at the end, because it’s the most important thing in this whole post.
30+ Monthly Anniversary Tradition Ideas
Here’s your cheat sheet. Screenshot it, pin it, or bookmark this page and just work your way down the list.
Five-Minute Ideas (for the crazy months)
- Sticky note on the bathroom mirror before they wake up
- A text at lunch listing one thing you’re grateful they do
- Their favorite drink waiting in the car
- A voice memo instead of a text (their voice in your ear hits different)
- Hide a note in their laptop bag, lunch box, or coat pocket
- Send them a photo from your first year together with a sweet note
- One new song added to a shared playlist, chosen just for them
Need the words? We have 80+ love notes and free printables ready to print, plus 101 romantic love quotes to steal shamelessly.
Five-Dollar Ideas
- Grocery store flowers (grandpa was onto something)
- Their favorite candy bar with a note that says “still sweet on you”
- A donut or pastry from the good place, not the grocery store
- A magazine or paperback they’d love
- Their favorite chapstick, gum, or snack restocked without being asked
- A candle lit at dinner on an ordinary weeknight
Acts of Service Ideas
- Take over the one chore they secretly dread
- Handle bedtime solo so they get a full hour to themselves
- Fill their gas tank
- Make the phone call they’ve been avoiding
- Clean out their car, including the cup holders (true love)
- Let them sleep in and handle the morning chaos
Mini Date Ideas
- Dessert on the porch after the kids go down
- Drive to the spot where you had your first date, even if you just sit in the car
- Recreate one dish from your wedding or honeymoon
- Pull out the wedding album and go through it together
- One question you’ve never asked each other, over drinks
Want a fuller menu? Raid our quick and easy date ideas or the epic A to Z alphabet dating list — 350+ ideas, one for every letter.
Keepsake Ideas (these stack over time!)
These are our favorites, because after a few years you’ve accidentally built an heirloom.
- The jar: Every month, write one thing you love about them on a slip of paper. Read the whole jar on your anniversary.
- The notebook: One shared journal. Each month, one of you writes a page. Twelve pages a year, forever.
- The same photo: Take a picture in the same spot, same pose, every single month. Just wait until you see year five.
- The card that goes back and forth: One anniversary card. You sign it and hide it for them; they find it, sign it, and hide it back. For decades.
- The ornament: One small ornament a month that represents something from that month. Your tree becomes your whole marriage.
Our anniversary date ideas, gifts & free printables post has memory jars, love maps, and printable keepsakes if you’d like a head start.
Other Marriage Traditions Worth Stealing
The 12th isn’t magic. The repeating is magic.
So if a monthly date doesn’t fit your life, steal one of these instead — the Gottman Institute points out that rituals of connection build shared meaning, and shared meaning is what turns two people into a we.
- The six-second kiss. Every hello and goodbye. Long enough to actually mean it.
- Sunday night state of the union. Fifteen minutes, no phones: How was your week? What do you need from me this week?
- The last ten minutes. Phones down, lights off, ten minutes of talking before sleep. Every night.
- First-of-the-month adventure. One new-to-both-of-you thing every month. New restaurant, new trail, new anything.
- The annual letter. Every anniversary, write each other a letter and don’t open last year’s until you’ve written this year’s.
- The gratitude round. At dinner, each of you names one thing your spouse did that day. Kids can play too.
Want more? We’ve rounded up 60+ fun traditions to celebrate year round, and if you want to ease into a rhythm of daily romance, the 30 Day Love Challenge is a perfect on-ramp.
The Part That Matters Most: You Get to Go First
Here’s the thing nobody said out loud at that funeral, but is the KEY to the whole thing…
Grandpa didn’t wait.
He didn’t wait for her to be more affectionate first. He didn’t wait until finances were better, or the kids were older, or he had more free time, or he felt more appreciated.
He just… started. On the 12th. And then he kept going.
So much of the disappointment in marriage comes from waiting for our spouse to become the person who makes us feel loved.
But you don’t control their choices. You control yours.
You can’t make your spouse start a tradition. You can’t make them remember, or notice, or reciprocate on your timeline.
But you can be the one who goes first.
And here’s what tends to happen when you do: love that gets given consistently has a funny way of coming back around. Not always right away. But warmth is contagious, and a spouse who feels genuinely cherished usually starts cherishing back.
And even if it takes a while? You will have spent those months becoming the kind of person who loves well. That’s never a loss.
Here’s the part that should make you hopeful: a long marriage isn’t the faded version of a new one. Couples who keep choosing each other will tell you the very best years came later — which is exactly why we believe you should never stop dating your spouse, even after you’re married.
“Mature love has a bliss not even imagined by newlyweds.”
— Boyd K. Packer
That line is one of our all-time favorites, and it’s one of the 10 things we believe every parent should teach their children about marriage.
Megan’s grandparents got to live that bliss. And they got there twelve small moments a year at a time.
What Will They Say About Your Marriage?
Megan’s grandpa never knew that this would be the story told about him.
He wasn’t building a legacy. He was just buying flowers on a Thursday because it happened to be the 12th.
But 66 years of Thursdays turned into the thing his family will repeat for generations — and into a grandma who never once had to wonder whether she was adored.
You don’t need a bigger budget. You don’t need more free time. You don’t need your spouse to go first.
You just need a date on the calendar and the willingness to keep showing up.
A monthly anniversary tradition is a small act of love you repeat on the same date every month — usually the day of the month you got married. If you were married on the 12th, you do something a little extra for your spouse on the 12th of every month. It can be flowers, a love note, a favorite treat, taking over a chore, or a five-minute mini date. The gesture changes; the date never does. Couples love it because it’s small enough to keep forever and consistent enough to build decades of connection.
Start by picking a date that already means something — your wedding date, the day you met, or your engagement date. Set a recurring monthly reminder in your phone so you never have to rely on memory. Then choose a baseline gesture that’s small enough to do on your busiest month, like leaving a note on the bathroom mirror. Anything bigger is a bonus. The most common reason marriage traditions fail isn’t lack of love; it’s setting the bar too high to sustain.
Yes — and research backs it up. Dr. John Gottman’s decades of couples research produced a simple motto: small things often. Frequent small moments of connection build a stronger relationship than occasional grand gestures. Separately, researchers at Harvard found that couples who deliberately keep relationship rituals report greater satisfaction and commitment than couples who don’t. Consistency, not expense, is what makes a spouse feel genuinely cherished.
Some of the easiest and most effective options take five minutes or less: a sticky note on the bathroom mirror, a voice memo instead of a text, their favorite drink waiting in the car, taking over the chore they dread most, a 20-second hug, or sending a photo from your first year together. The key is choosing gestures that match your spouse’s love language rather than the ones you personally find romantic.
You can’t control your spouse’s choices, but you fully control your own — and someone has to go first. Starting a tradition without waiting for it to be reciprocated isn’t losing; it’s leading. Love that’s given consistently tends to come back around over time, because a spouse who feels genuinely cherished usually starts cherishing back. And even if it takes a while, you’ll have spent those months becoming a person who loves well, which is never wasted.
Not at all — and it isn’t just for newlyweds. Celebrating a monthly anniversary simply gives you twelve built-in reminders a year to prioritize your marriage instead of one. You don’t have to call it an anniversary or make a fuss about it. Many couples quietly mark the date with a small gesture and never announce it. One couple kept the tradition for 66 years, and their family didn’t learn about it until the grandkids were grown.
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