Do You Still Celebrate Monthsary After Your First Anniversary?
Somewhere around month eleven, one of you will ask it: so… after our anniversary, do we still do monthsaries? It sounds like a small logistics question. It is actually one of the sweetest conversations a couple can have, because underneath it sits a better question — how do we want to keep celebrating us, now that this is clearly not a phase?
The internet gives you two loud, opposite answers: monthsaries forever, and monthsaries are for new couples, grow up. The truth, as usual, lives in the middle, and it depends on the two of you. Here is how to think it through.
First, the vocabulary: is an anniversary yearly or monthly?
An anniversary is yearly — the word literally comes from the Latin annus, meaning year. So no, an anniversary is not every month; the 14th of every month is not twelve anniversaries a year. What you are celebrating each month is a monthsary (also spelled monthiversary by some couples) — an informal, affectionate word invented precisely because anniversary was already taken by the yearly milestone.
So the timeline looks like this: monthsaries fill the space between day one and year one, your first anniversary arrives at twelve months, and from then on the anniversary is the official yearly celebration. The open question is what happens to the monthly one — and that is entirely up to you. If you want the deeper story of the difference, we have a full post on monthsary versus anniversary and which dates to celebrate.
What couples actually do after the first year
Ask around — or scroll any relationship forum in India or the Philippines, where monthsary culture runs deepest — and you will find couples split into three honest camps.
- •The keepers: they celebrate every monthsary indefinitely, often smaller than before — a message, a dessert, a photo — because the ritual itself is the point.
- •The graduates: they retire monthsaries at the first anniversary and pour that energy into one properly big yearly celebration, plus birthdays and festivals.
- •The milestoners: they stop counting every month but still mark the special ones — eighteen months, 500 days, 1000 days — whenever the counter shows a number worth toasting.
The case for continuing monthsaries
Monthly rituals are frequency, and frequency is what keeps affection visible. A yearly anniversary is a highlight; a monthly nod is a habit, and habits are what relationships actually run on. Couples who keep a tiny monthsary tradition — even just a standing dinner on the 14th or a two-line message — build in twelve guaranteed moments a year where the relationship gets looked at, appreciated, and said out loud.
This matters more, not less, as the relationship matures. Year one supplies its own fireworks. Year three is carpools and deadlines, and a small recurring celebration is a quiet insurance policy against taking each other for granted. Long-distance couples especially tend to keep monthsaries going, because when you cannot share the ordinary days, the marked ones carry more weight.
The case for letting them go
There is also a perfectly loving argument for retiring the monthly ritual. For some couples, the monthsary was scaffolding — it held the new relationship up while it set, and once you have moved in together, met the families, survived a flat tyre and a fever, the scaffolding can come down without the building wobbling.
And if the monthsary has started to feel like homework — a date you remember with mild panic rather than a smile, an exchange of obligatory gifts nobody wanted to buy — that is a sign the form has outlived the feeling. A ritual that runs on guilt is worse than no ritual. Retiring it, kindly and together, is not a downgrade; it is honest maintenance.
The only real mistake is deciding silently. If one of you quietly stops caring about monthsaries while the other quietly keeps counting, the missed date will not read as practicality — it will read as forgetting. This is a two-minute conversation. Have it.
The middle path most couples land on
After the first anniversary, the most common pattern looks something like this — and it works because it keeps the warmth without the admin.
- •Anniversary becomes the flagship: the yearly date gets the planning, the gift, the proper celebration.
- •Monthsaries shrink into micro-rituals: no gifts, no pressure — just a message on the date, a shared dessert, or a photo added to the album. Thirty seconds of noticing.
- •Milestone numbers get their moment: 500 days, eighteen months, 1000 days. A day counter does the remembering, and when a lovely round number shows up, that is your excuse for an unplanned celebration.
- •One rule stays sacred: whatever you choose, you both know the plan. The calendar should never be a loyalty test.
What matters more than the calendar
Here is the secret hiding under the whole monthsary-versus-anniversary question: the date was never the point. The point was that, once a month, you both looked up from your lives and said — still you, still us, still counting. Whether you do that every month, every year, or every time your counter hits a number that makes you smile, is style, not substance.
That is exactly why we built CountingUs the way we did: it counts your days together continuously, so every single morning is technically a milestone — day 412 and counting — and the special numbers surface on their own. Keep the monthsaries or retire them; either way, the counting never stops. And on the days you do decide to celebrate, you will know exactly how far you have come, down to the day.