In honor of celebrating our fifth-year wedding anniversary this coming Friday, I wanted to share a very quick and easy DIY project that I’ve done in the past.  Once you have all the materials you need, it literally takes minutes from start to finish!

Below are pictures of my finished product, as well as a few details of my love story map:

• WHERE WE MET: Paul and I met way back on December 1994 in Sunday School at church, which was at the time renting the gym at the Boys and Girls’ Club in downtown Jersey City as the meeting space. I was nine and, he was eight.  If you ask Paul, he’d tell you I struck his fancy the first day we met because I (along with my sister) named all the books of the Bible when no one else could.  Frankly the feelings were not mutual =P But we did grow up being close friends and ten years later, the feelings did become mutual and we started dating ❤
• WHERE WE GOT ENGAGED: It was on our fifth-year dating anniversary that we got engaged.  A lot happened that day and a future blog post may appear about it; but for the sake of this DIY project, I’ll share now that after having dinner at Chart House in Weehawken, we walked outside and he proposed while we sat on one of the boardwalk benches overlooking the NYC skyline.  Since then we’ve made it a point to return to Chart House at least once a year to celebrate our engagement ❤
• WHERE WE GOT MARRIED:  When Paul and I were scouting for venues, we wanted three things: 1) He wanted something near some type of water while I wanted 2) a city skyline and 3) floor-to-ceiling windows.  Chart House was the first venue we visited and right after it, we were scheduled to see the Hyatt Regency in Jersey City.  On our way to the Hyatt, Paul and I were thinking that we were simply meeting them out of courtesy since we just knew we weren’t going to be able to afford it (and we were fairly sure we were going with Chart House).  Paul even told me that he was getting frustrated while the Hyatt coordinator was showing us around because the place was gorgeous; and we knew for sure we weren’t going to have it as our wedding venue.  Well, to make the long story short – thanks to my sister and her detailed documentation of email exchanged with the Hyatt, we were able to secure Hyatt with an unbelievable discount while still receiving all the perks!  Looking back, it still feels like a dream to think that we actually got married there ❤

What do you think of this DIY – are there places that come to mind that you’d use for it?  If it’s something you’ll be doing, I’d love to see how your project comes out!