Candlelight Dinner courtesy of McDonald

On May 24th I had the wonderful privilege to celebrate seven years of marriage to a beautiful, virtuous, intelligent, and warm hearted not to mention extremely patient woman (she has to be if she’s married to me) who’s become an incredible mother. I am blessed beyond my wildest dreams. It has been a journey filled with meaningful, joyful and tender memories.

To celebrate I surprised my wife with a romantic candlelight dinner courtesy of McDonald. I had the candles lit and soft music playing in the background. I cued up our wedding song, set it on repeat and voila the mood was set.

Women I know what you are thinking, McDonald?! YES, M-C-D-O-N-A-L-D-S!

Risky, you ask gentlemen? Nope, not at all.

And, yes, it was a total success. She laughed for a good ten minutes and even blushed. It was spontaneous, silly, fun, romantic and most importantly meaningful.

The moral of the blog, well, I dunno… it’s a random post. But, if I must have one, I guess it’s NOT to make these special celebratory moments superficial. The media is constantly bombarding us with images from Kay Jewelers portraying what “love” looks like or how the “perfect evening” could only be captured at Caesars Palace. Don’t fall for the hype! Keep it simple, be creative, even silly but most important make sure it’s meaningful.

We’ve done the dinner thing at four or five star restaurant several times before, Broadway shows, even the spa thing but time will tell that this candlelight McDonald’s dinner will go down as one if not the most memorable anniversaries of them all.

At risk of not rendering full disclosure, maybe I should preface this all by noting that my wife and I agreed in advance to use the money we would spend on our birthday, anniversary, mother’s and father’s day gifts to purchase tickets to game 2 of the Orlando Magic semifinal playoffs. (We’re on the Dave Ramsey retirement plan.) So technically she wasn’t expecting anything “special” for an anniversary gift, or any gift for that matter. BUT let me reassure you, even if she was, the candlelight McDonald dinner would have appeased any and all expectations.