My husband would be the first to tell you that Valentine’s Day around here hasn’t always been so funny. Well, it is now that we’re 18+ years into marriage and too busy to dwell on it, but at the time, there was no laughing involved.
(Amour art can be found here.)
In fact, there were a lot of tears the year that I was nine months pregnant and he thought buying me a label maker(!!) was a romantic gesture. (Remember the scene from Father of the Bride when Annie gets a blender from her fiancé? I had a similar reaction.) To be clear, I had never–and still haven’t–expressed any interest in or desire to own a label maker.
There was also the year when we were dating and he bought me a rain CD (the prehistoric version of Alexa playing white noise), dropped it off and then went out with his friends. . . And yet another year when I suggested that we make each other presents and then when he actually did it, my feelings were hurt because I had bought him something. (My fault.)
I tell you all of this (with his permission, by the way) to say that marriage does get better with time and Valentine’s Day becomes much less significant. (Many of you are way ahead of me and can already attest to this.) Believe it or not, young brides, the things that you once put so much weight on will eventually/probably become the most ridiculous to you at some point in your life. I just heard on the news the other day that the majority of money spent on Valentine’s gifts are by people in relationships three years or newer. (There’s a reason for that.) Everyday dependability (like someone who will change explosive diapers or clean up vomit at 2am) starts to look way more attractive in the long run than grand romantic gestures. It may not sound magical but it’s a good place to be.
Want to know what I specifically asked for this year? I requested that my 12-passenger van (or party bus, as we like to call it) be professionally cleaned inside and out. I’ve literally been driving around a bacteria-mobile and I can’t stand it. He came through and I couldn’t be happier! But, he knew well enough to ask me at least 11 times if I was “sure that’s what I really wanted.” :) He may still be traumatized from my meltdowns in past years. . . It’s safe to say that we’ve come a long way from the label maker days.
Okay, so I always love hearing your stories. What is your funniest/most ridiculous/most terrible Valentine’s Day gift? Do tell.
I don’t have a story – but this was fantastic!
I don’t have any good stories because we don’t typically “do” Valentine’s Day. Although, there WAS the year he was gone for twelve days (over two crazy sports filled weekends for our four children) on a guys’ golfing trip, but I got flowers and emeralds out of that, so I can’t complain. :)
Your message reminds me of the post I’ve seen on Facebook about the knight in shining armor who came up to the grocery store when his wife left her wallet at home. He did it with a smile on his face because he understood that they were part of a team. That’s real, lasting love. As is a clean van. Happy Valentine’s!
Ha! These are amazing! A few years ago I lost it when my husband came home with blue carnations. (Imagine a reaction similar to Charlotte and Carrie in Sex and the City – Carnations?! Filler Flowers!) Needless to say, he hasn’t brought those home again. Of course, now I realize how silly that whole exchange was, and hope someday he won’t be so scarred by it and will bring home carnations ‘just because.’ Happy Valentine’s Day!
Filler flowers! 😂😂 And blue flowers always make me think of funeral homes. . .
One year my husband actually came home with funeral flowers. A gigantic casket arrangement that the florist sold him for a “great price” when he showed up at closing on Valentine’s Day. She didn’t tell him that it was a funeral arrangement instead selling him on the fact that it was so large and showy. I almost died, pun not intended, and finally filled him in after I realized that I couldn’t hide my shock. There was nowhere to put the monstrosity so I divided the flowers up into 6 different arrangements.
Oh I laughed so hard at this. Thank you! I needed this laugh!!
This is so true! This year, I bought myself some gorilla glue and told my husband I’d taken care of my Valentines gift already. It’s truly what I wanted…..but now that you mention it, I’d love someone to pry the loose french fries, goldfish dust, and melted crayon wax from the carpets of my minivan (mom-mobile)!
I’m sure they found way worse in our van. Fortunately, he took it so I didn’t have to see the people who cleaned it in person. #embarrassing
This is a toss-up for me. I’ll let you chose. The first year we were married, I got a Valentine card with a pig holding sausages and a knock-knock joke on it. Knock, knock. Who’s there? Butcher. Butcher who? Butcher arms around me and give me a big kiss! To add insult to injury, he wrote inside, “Good cards were hard to come by tonight.” Nothing like letting your new bride know you waited until the 11th hour! And then there were the two years in a row I received EXACTLY THE SAME CARD! With all the millions of valentine cards in the world, how is that even possible????
If he had just left off “tonight”! Ha!
We are 43 yrs. into this marriage thing. I don”t have any funny/ridiculous ones, just redundant ones. First, I’ll preface that he doesn’t think this day should exist, hence the redundancy. For years and years, I got grocery store roses that had seen better days. After a while, red roses were an afterthought in my eyes, so I asked him to be a bit more creative. Now it was carnations or tulips or some other type of grocery store flower. Snooze. Can’t expect miracles! Then, again, I asked if he could not be so predictable, so I started getting boxed candy….the same kind every year, the kind in the long skinny boxes with the initials R.S. That took some effort, lemme tell ya! After all these years, I tell him I don’t need this stuff anymore. What did I get today? A double boxed pair of R.S. candies and a bag of pistachio nuts from the grocery store. Oh well, at least he’s predictable!
This was a great post- thanks for sharing and your honesty! We all learn as we go along, don’t we? The gift of a good husband become the real treasure. Love that he cleaned the van for you- better gift than any roses. My special gift this year (after 54 years of marriage) was a new toilet that is higher- my knees and I appreciate it so much. who would ever guess as a young bride I’d be so happy for this? Happy Valentines Day to you – I look forward to your postings so much. Thank you.
I’ve been married for 20 years now. Our early years were filled with some drama on every holiday. I romanticized it in my head & was always disappointed. And his response was always that I was over-reacting. Looking back I realized he was right & that those things just aren’t that important. But him doing the weekly grocery shopping because I hate to do it or making sure my car always has gas in it are the things that really show you love a person.
The younger me should be ashamed of herself.
Car detailing is the BEST gift for any mom. We spend more time in those cars than we would like so it might as well not smell terrible – at least for a few days. I had my husband’s car detailed for his birthday a few years ago and he was so surprised and thrilled! It goes both ways :) This year, we didn’t even exchange cards. I would rather save the $10 for something else like not cooking dinner!! 18 years married and 25 years together!
Thirty-seven years here (our anniversary was last week!). Valentine’s Day is a sweet thought, but has never been really important to us. We’ve rarely bought gifts for V Day, but usually choose some type of something to do. We never, ever go out on V Day – hello! it’s not particularly romantic to me to be out with 10,000 other people eating out on V Day. It’s usually a quiet evening at home. I try to cook a nice meal or he will pick up a meal. We usually have a treat (dessert), etc. We will go out somewhere nice later in the weekend and I have plans to make a dessert this weekend too. But there will be cards, etc. I would KILL him if he bought me flowers as they mark them up awful!! I got them last week anyway. LOL
Love the van gift! Yes, after 21 years of marriage and 26 years together we don’t really do much for Valentine’s Day. I will take all the weekend breakfast making and dog walking and all the other things he does on a daily basis!
I’ve been hard of hearing since a young child & wasn’t aware until I was grown – many years after. My sweet husband and my adult children are constantly required to shout so that I can hear them. I’ve used closed captioning on TV and at movie theaters for over 15 years. This year I bought a pair of hearing aids for my husband. I’ll surprise my children soon. And I held out for years hoping for an affordable offer – my first quote was $14,000/or. I couldn’t afford them so I tried to forget about it. Yesterday, 2/13, the new pair came USPS. The quality are on par with the big price tag and perform much much better. I found a great offer for under $300/or. They are my Valentine for husband and 3 grown children. They will be thrilled. We have a gender revel party on Friday so I’ll likely share my news with them afterwards.
16 years of marriage and I couldn’t agree more – I’ll take the man who gets up with a vomiting kid during the night than one who buys me all the flowers in the world on Valentine’s Day. When we were dating he bought a device similar to this one except it was a personal warming device because I was always cold in restaurants, at work, etc. I know he thought it would really help me out, but I would never wear something like this in public! https://www.ebay.com/p/Sharper-Image-Personal-Cooling-System-3-0-Battery-Operated-Air-Conditioner/1607626387?iid=183663339820&chn=ps&ul_ref=https%253A%252F%252Frover.ebay.com%252Frover%252F1%252F711-117182-37290-0%252F2%253Fmpre%253Dhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.ebay.com%25252Fp%25252FSharper-Image-Personal-Cooling-System-3-0-Battery-Operated-Air-Conditioner%25252F1607626387%25253Fiid%25253D183663339820%252526chn%25253Dps%2526itemid%253D183663339820%2526targetid%253D477790080385%2526device%253Dm%2526adtype%253Dpla%2526googleloc%253D9007093%2526poi%253D%2526campaignid%253D1591255870%2526adgroupid%253D62826452791%2526rlsatarget%253Dpla-477790080385%2526abcId%253D1139306%2526merchantid%253D8579644%2526gclid%253DCjwKCAiAwJTjBRBhEiwA56V7qwRwI8pWICYUslyEDJW8o2pVVJYDOKhM9KZq8K-npg9I5LWoauECvRoCBIkQAvD_BwE%2526srcrot%253D711-117182-37290-0%2526rvr_id%253D1858236064864%2526rvr_ts%253Decbda27f1680ad79c0f4b505ffeeca27
Well, this is very interesting. . . 😂
I may be your oldest reader and must relate that April 7th will mark our 57 years of marriage, Just out of college we married and he enlisted in the army to avoid the draft. We truly lived on love because his income was so meager but a 10 cents box of cinnamon hearts was all he could come up with for our first Valentines together. To this day he still regales me with cinnamon hearts as a remembrance of how far we’ve come – but they now come in a bag for nearly $2. Togetherness for this length of time is to be treasured.
I loved your post today! Enjoy that clean van.
Married almost 30 years, and can’t recall any funny stories! Probably because my husband is the romantic one and I’m the practical and frugal one. I appreciate all the ways he tries to express his love, but gift giving isn’t my main love language (it’s “acts of service”) When he does stuff without me even asking, I’m smitten.
We are celebrating our 43rd anniversary this year. Back when we were dating he chose a very unusual way to let me know he wanted to get serious about me. He said he wanted to talk to me about something and when he did it was to tell me he was buying new tires for his car! We lived an hour apart then and saw each other at school a hour or two a day. His romantic side never really developed but he always shows his love by doing little things especially related to car care. I’ve learned to love him for it. Happy Valentines Day to you and yours!
Not valentines….Mother’s Day the year I was eight months pregnant and was given a power mower. Why? Because he was tired of seeing me use the push mower. Ex-hubby, I must add.
Ummmm….. I have no words.
My husband reuses all , special occasion cards over and over.Funny guy. Not. Perpetually ground hog day here!
We just had our second baby and sold our first home for a huge loss (a lot of unexpected problems at the last minute), so I told him to do nothing. He confirmed liked your husband a dozen times that is what I really wanted and it was! Just did a few small things for the kids. Fast forward to Valentine’s Day the door bell rings and he answers it. He comes in the house with a HUGE bouquet of red roses. I said I can’t believe you bought those for me. He gets all red faced and says “um these are actually for Lucy (our neighor)”. Apparently no one was home and the delivery guy didn’t want to circle back and asked if we could deliver them. That story always makes me smile.
I love this story. I also had flowers delivered here for the neighbor once. :)
I love this story! There was a time in my life, I wouldn’t love a label maker as a V-day gift. I would think it wasn’t special. But right now, I would LOVE a label maker as I love to label things!
I own a Hallmark store and there were days in our early years that we would pick up roses from the flower market, de-thorn them and then put them in plastic tubes to sell. My hands would hurt from the water/thorns. back would hurt from standing over the stink and by the time I was finished, I would hate those silly roses. And what would he send me???? A dozen roses. LOL! I had to tell him to stop sending them to me. (one year, I actually sold them to a customer because they wanted to buy them and when you own a gift store on V-day, you’ll sell anything!) Now he doesn’t get me anything but a card but I’m going home tonight and tell him I want him to get my car detailed. Thanks for the idea!
on a side note – I know folks say it’s a made up holiday and it doesn’t mean anything but any day that makes the man you love stop and tell you that he loves you, is a good day in my book. Hang out in a card store and your heart will be warmed by these men who really want the woman in their lives to know they do love her because sometimes it does get lost in the day-to-day grind.
We’re not big into Valentines cards and gifts. On the other hand, what was your husband thinking bringing your gift to you and then going out with his friends?
It wasn’t a happy night. . . . ;)
Yes this is so true! Christmas is just as bad. He is a terrible shopper. So now I ask for a car wash and wax. Just so much easier and less of a disappointment
Hubby & I have been married 27 years and we have a 13 year old. Valentine’s Day was never a real big deal for us. Early on we’d usually exchange cards, go out for Happy Hour/appetizer and drink to avoid the overpriced, forced meal and continued that when our son was real small because it was easier babysitter-wise. Now for about the past 10 years we have a tradition of a family dinner of lemon linguini with prawns and chocolate fondue for dessert with heart shaped plates. Seems a little corny now, but it’s tradition and we’re never disappointed about something “fancy” not meeting our expectations.
Ha! Great post! I’ve been with my husband for almost 18 years and we’ve been married for 9. My husband decided to give me something our first Valentine’s Day as parents and it was part of the reason it fell to the wayside. He gave me a paper shredder that had to be cranked over a trash can! He said he got it because he knew I had a bunch of documents I wanted to shred. Our son was a week old and I had stitches, there was no way I was cranking/shredding anything! Although we no longer care, he takes our 8 year old to pick out something for me. This year, he gave me a chew toy to give the dog. Nice!
This isn’t about me, but it’s funny. My oldest son would order a dozen roses for his girlfriend from Whole Foods, drive some distance to pick them up. I would kid him and say she wasn’t eating them ! Now fast forward 7 years and they’re getting married in June. She is sick this Valentine’s Day, he stayed home in case she needed anything. They are both teachers working in germ ridden classrooms. I asked what he’d gotten her, she wanted new underwear since joining CrossFit she’s dropped weight. Real life, folks ! I smiled to myself-illness and underwear !
35 years in May. His last minute card? He found a Christmas card and wrote Happy V-day! Love, Ted.
My card(s) to him? One from our cat, Livi. And the other? It sings “Love Stinks!” (He doesn’t like the card. Imagine?)
My poor husband was pretty stressed out early in our marriage when February would come around. Valentines’ day is 5 days before my birthday and 9 days before our anniversary. Somewhere around year 3 or 4 of being married, he realized that he’d forgotten to get me Valentine card, so instead of running to the nearest grocery store he popped into the bookstore at his place of employment at the time, (Focus on the Family) instead. “May the Lord bless you this Valentine’s Day” was definitely NOT my idea of a romantic gesture!! Ha! We decided to stop buying each other cards after that and just enjoy a nice meal and time spent together!
I went to the store yesterday and bought my own flowers and told my husband I got them for myself. He had to run to Walmart last night and called me very confused as to why it was so busy there. I explained it was the night before Valentine’s Day and he kind of gasped. Then he brought in a heart candy box and put it on the table when he got home. I *actually* bought two filet mignon steaks at Target yesterday, and as I was checking out, I turn to the man at the register and the older woman behind me and said “nothing says I love you like a steak from the target grocery center, right?“. So far from the lobster dinners and romantic evenings from our dating years;)
45 years of marriage here….. and we have never made a big deal out of Valentine’s Day. No tears. No expectations. Oh, there have been cards, flowers, chocolate, etc. There may have even been a piece of jewelry somewhere along the way. I don’t really remember. But the funniest thing my husband does for Valentines is take us out to dinner the night before. Why? Because he hates crowds. Pretty sure I’ll fix dinner for us tonight, as usual. In case you’re wondering we had butterfly shrimp and sea bass at a local fish market last night. He picked the place! God love him…..
Once my husband got me grocery store sunflowers and said he got them because the roses were so marked up for valentines day. Another year he got me white chocolate which is the only chocolate I hate.. I was like .. do you even know me??
This is so true! Our first year married I made his favorite meal, had our wedding slideshow prepped and he came home with a pink, white, and red wilted rose from shoprite and claimed “he took the baby’s breath out because I didn’t like baby’s breath”. Year 7 and all I wanted was to order take out.
Today my husband called me on his way home to tell me that he tried to get me flowers, but the grocery store was out. I said, “so you called me to tell me you didn’t get me flowers?”
This is just a funny Valentines Day story, I actually loved it. Okay so 17 years ago, I’m 7 months pregnant, feeling good, elated to be having my third. Life was insane, he was crazy busy, I said let’s just get takeout, he said OK. And we did, we got takeout, hung out with our other kids, then watched a movie, it was great. Then next night he’s at the grocery store and sees that roses are half price so he decides, hey, I’ll surprise her – sweet : ) At the checkout he runs into the husband of an acquaintance of mine, a guy who knew very well that I was expecting. He looks at the half-price roses in my husband’s hand, looks at my husband, at the flowers again, back at my husband and says with disbelief-approaching-envy: “You get away with that?!”
I once got a t-shirt from the FleetFarm store with a picture of a cow and the caption “I will love ❤️ you for heifer”. 🐄 I dare anyone to top that. 😂
I think you win. Forever.
This was great! And so true!
When my husband and I were in the early dating stage he picked me up from my apartment and I though he was whisking me away to some romantic restaurant. After he picked me up, he divulged his plan which included a first stop at Wal-mart to go grocery shopping together then cook me a delicious dinner at his place. I started to cry. The date sounded awful to me! Ha! I thought maybe he completely forgot we were going on a date and threw a plan together (which included shopping for groceries). After 13 years of marriage, I can now think back to that “date” and laugh! He knew my love language was quality time but let’s face it-I still don’t like going shopping for groceries!
I’ve been married for almost 23 years, and I can verify that gifts don’t make a marriage. My husband and I are two of the least mushy people around, but we support each other every day in different ways. That’s love to me!
A month late, but I’m just now reading this post and it made me smile. My husband and I have been married for 14 years and together for 16. Our first date was actually on Valentine’s Day, so you’d think that it would carry a little more weight. It doesn’t. To be fair, my husband did not grow up in a house that really celebrated holidays whereas my mom went over the top for everything, so we had to find a little common ground when we started our life together.
Anyway, it was our first Valentine’s day as a married couple (we’d only been married 1 month). I cooked a delicious dinner (stuffed lobster tails! Homemade coconut macaroons!) and put on a pretty black dress, makeup, heels, the works. My husband comes home from work, hands me a grocery bag containing a card, candy hearts, and the receipt, then takes off his pants and sits down at the dinner table in his boxers (not in a sexy way, more in an Al Bundy sort of way). I was stunned silent and when he saw how much effort I had made could not stop apologizing (but didn’t put his pants back on!). It was awful then, but SO, SO funny now.