Wedding keepsakes can help preserve happy memories for a couple. They are infused with celebration, nostalgia, and, of course, love. But occasionally, one item can take center stage and, like a relationship, endures the test of time and grows in sentimental value. Some couples refer to these treasures as wedding artifacts.
We recently asked readers to submit their most cherished wedding items and received more than 400 responses. Cake toppers, bouquets and wedding dresses were popular mentions. Some readers — those who stayed together and even those who didn’t — shared photos and stories based on sentimentality and nostalgia. Others highlighted keepsakes steeped in generational importance or linked to a loved one who died.
The 10 wedding items below were chosen for their uniqueness, significance and back story. Submissions have been edited.
They Took a Chance
In 1998, I was contemplating my relationship with Jerry. He lived in New York, I was in Providence, R.I. Jerry was great, but I was teaching, settled, and wasn’t sure we could do a long-distance relationship. I was walking back to my car, and on the sidewalk, I saw a book with the spine facing up like the roof of a house. It wasn’t there 15 minutes earlier when I had parked. I said to myself, if this book has anything to do with my relationship, I’ll stick it out with Jerry a while longer. The book’s title was “Chance and the Woman,” by Middleton, which is my husband’s last name. I took this as a sign from the universe that we belonged together. We got married on Oct. 5, 2002, at a friend’s loft near the Javits Center. Jerry, a cabinetmaker, built a pedestal for the book, which was displayed alongside photos of us. Now, it’s in a glass-fronted bookcase next to our fireplace. I might not have married him had I not come upon this book.
Karen Klingon, New York City
Annual Love Letters
My husband and I had an intimate wedding on Sept. 10, 2018, with immediate family in Positano, Italy. We incorporated a wine box, which I ordered with our last names and our wedding year printed on it from Etsy, into our wedding ceremony. I’m sentimental and like to reflect. The morning of our wedding, we wrote letters to each other to capture our feelings for the day and what we were looking forward to in our first year of marriage. During the ceremony, our sisters held the box, and we placed the letters and a bottle of local wine inside, with the plan to enjoy the wine and read the letters on our first wedding anniversary. We’ve kept the tradition every year. After reading our letters and enjoying our wine, we write new letters and put a new bottle of wine, usually from somewhere we’d traveled that year, in the box for the following year. It’s been a special way to relive the magic of our wedding, but also encapsulate each year of our marriage. The wine box is displayed on our end table in our living room.
Kelly Piscitelli, Brooklyn, N.Y.
‘Here Comes the Sun’
We met in Central Park in the summer of 2017 during the solar eclipse. Michele didn’t have the special sunglasses needed to look at the eclipse. I lent her mine. We started talking, then we shared the bottle of champagne I brought for the auspicious occasion. We took turns looking at the meeting of the sun and moon through the glasses. It was amazing. When she took the glasses, I looked into her eyes, that was the most special meeting that occurred that day. We got married on Jan. 21, 2021, outside of Belvedere Castle, in the park where we met. I took out the glasses and talked about them while reading my vows. After we were married, we danced to the song “Here Comes The Sun.” We keep the sunglasses displayed in our living room on a console near our bookshelves.
Richard Darrigo, New York City
A T-Shirt to Remember
We are activists and feminists in our 70s who have been together for 34 years. My wife and I got married three times. The first time was at the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation in front of the I.R.S. building. You received a certificate, but it wasn’t legal. I wore an “I Can’t Even March Straight” T-shirt, which we bought at the march. Our second marriage was in Canada in 2008, in the backyard of two gay men who ran a bed-and-breakfast. We wore sparkly silver garlands with white curly ribbon going down our backs. On Aug. 31, 2013, we got married in our living room, wearing the T-shirt and the garlands, with five guests, a license from a rogue register of wills in Norristown, Pa., who began issuing marriage licenses in defiance of Pennsylvania’s ban on same-sex marriage. A year later, that ban was found unconstitutional by a federal judge, and our marriage was then legal. The shirt, which is steeped in memory, is in my dresser drawer. It’s yellowed, 30 years old, and a dream we never thought would come true — and then it did.
Peg Welch, York, Pa.
Something Old and Blue
We got married on Sept. 10, 2016, at a winery called Breaux Vineyards in Purcellville, Va. It was a simple affair, with less than 50 guests. I wore a white lace dress paired with a rustic bouquet and a pair of 1940s blue peep-toed shoes, which were my grandmother’s and reminiscent of a younger side. She met my grandfather during World War II. She was a nurse; he was a soldier. They fell in love and proved to be the example of marriage I wanted to model my partnership after. I knew and loved her as the matriarch of our family — calm, kind, full of infinite wisdom and stories. I stumbled upon her shoes in the back of her closet. They were sexy and had a heel. She died before I met and married my husband. I knew they’d be my something blue. A cobbler restored them. I wore them twice, once to the courthouse and once to our wedding ceremony and party. I felt a closeness to her walking in her shoes. It was a feeling of presence. They are fragile, easily 80 to 90 years old, and are wrapped in tissue and stored in a box on the top shelf of my closet.
Carrie Ellis, Fairfax County, Va.
Memories on Ice
We got married in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, on Oct. 29, 2011. It was in a townhouse with a planned backyard ceremony. Our wedding turned out to be a huge mess, with a million things going wrong because that was the year of the blizzard. The meal I had cooked froze, so no one could eat it for hours. We were unable to have the ceremony outside. One of our friends had the forethought to go to the roof, scoop up some snow, put it in a glass jar and write in Sharpie, “Wedding Snow.” After many years and several moves, we have moved this little jar with love. We put it in a cooler, pack it in ice, and carry it like a heart transplant, and that is exactly what it has been. This jar of snow grounds me. I never touch the writing on it because I don’t want it to rub off.
Deborah Lopez, Rhinebeck, N.Y.
Fake Dinner, Real Engagement
My husband surprised me with an engagement and wedding 20 minutes later. He concocted an elaborate plan where I won a fancy dinner in a raffle put on by the St. Louis Cardinals — I’m a fan, and St. Louis was where we lived at the time. He proposed outside an Irish pub where we had pre-dinner drinks. Then we walked a few blocks to a popular wedding reception spot, where I saw our families on the steps. Inside were our closest friends. I fell more in love with him. The artifact is the invitation to the fake Cardinals dinner I won, which, included on the official Cardinal’s letterhead, was a clue that I didn’t catch it. The letters in the code at the bottom, 1LUPSWYMM, spelled out: I love you Peggy Sue, will you marry me? This was on display at our reception. Now it’s framed and in our living room on our bookshelf. He really knew me. It’s still the best memory of a lifetime.
Peggy Sue Carris, Bryan, Texas
Part of Their New Home
We got married at a group campsite at Sunset Bay State Park in Oregon on Aug. 25, 2024. We invited 50 friends, plus our families. Everyone camped out in the field for the weekend, celebrated, and explored the coast. The weekend was a collaboration between us and our community, with people contributing to cooking, cleaning, and decorating. One friend built an arbor on site out of driftwood that he gathered from surrounding beaches. Friends decorated it with flowers. The arbor was the backdrop to our wedding ceremony. We had two lines extended off the arbor that we called “love lines” so people could clip love notes to them. When we deconstructed the arbor to return the driftwood to the land, we decided to incorporate something that had significant memory into the home we are building. Eight, one- to three-feet pieces are being integrated into the railing of our stairwell that leads from the first floor to a loft. It’s one of the last pieces needed to complete a multiyear-long project, but the first piece of us as a married couple.
Devin Kesner, Eugene, Ore.
A Symbol of Transformation
Dan and I met at an improv comedy class in Boston in the ’90s. We were married in Brookline, Mass., in a venue called the Ballroom Veronique within Longwood Towers on Oct. 16, 2004. Dan’s uncle, who had taken up glassblowing, blew a thin cobalt blue sphere at the Toledo Museum of Art and brought it to us to stomp at the end of our Jewish ceremony. We never saw it because it was wrapped in a napkin. Afterward, he scooped up the shards, brought them back to his home in Ohio and blew three unique spherical keepsakes — one for us and one for each set of parents. Dan and I are not the most sentimental people, but this gorgeous piece of blown glass, which we keep on a bookshelf in our living room, is a meaningful reminder of our special day. Every few months I take it out, hold it up to the light and think about our wedding. It keeps us connected to our families, which are spread out around the country. It’s also a nice metaphor for transformation and permanence.
Sara Adelman Ring, Los Angeles, Calif.
Rock Solid Marriage
We got married on Oct. 16, 2010, in the divinity school chapel at Yale University, where we met in 2008 when we were graduate students. (I was a graduate student in music and religion; he was a law student.) I wanted a communal ritual that wouldn’t exclude anyone or their religion. We collected rocks from where we were from, Nebraska and Mississippi, among other locations. Each of our 120-plus guests wrote a single-word blessing on a rock using golf pencils, and during a communal song, they were placed in jars that we blessed. Some said peace, unconditional love, kindness, forgiveness. That night, I went over the words with Sharpies. I held each blessing in my hand and felt the weight of it, and how these people contributed to our relationship. I still hold that love in my hands. Two moves and three kids later, the rocks are currently in a glass-topped coffee table in the center of our living room. We love that the rocks remind us that our marriage is a choice that includes more than just the two of us.
Ann Phelps, Winston-Salem, N.C.
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