Your wedding day will feel like one you’ll never forget, but there are plenty of ways to keep the memories alive for your marriage years ahead.

The day after your wedding is often full of stories from the night before, fresh in your memory from less than 24 hours earlier. If you close your eyes, you can even feel exactly what it was like walking down the aisle, saying “I do,” and dancing the night away with your favorite people. You’ll think to yourself that there is no way you’ll forget a single second of your special day — and you probably won’t, at least not for a little while.

As the months turn into years and you celebrate the passage of each anniversary with more love than you started with, life tends to give you even more beautiful memories that can start to crowd the spaces in our minds we had previously devoted to our wedding day. But that’s a good thing, especially when there are so many great ways to preserve your most precious wedding memories.

Whether you’re looking for photo albums and displays, digital storage alternatives, or you want to preserve items from your big day, we’ve got you covered. Keep reading to discover traditional and unique ways to keep your wedding memories alive through the years.

Preserving Your Wedding Photos

There are so many options for photo preservation, so you can choose a variety of options depending on how you want to display or store them. Below are a few simple ideas to get you started:

• Leave instant-print cameras (like the Instax Mini 12) around your wedding venue so guests can snap pictures throughout your reception. Put out a scrapbook where they can tape in their snapshots and add a personal message for you to look back on. You can find instructions here.
• Instead of having guests create a scrapbook, you could have them drop them into a large memory box. When you go to look through them later on, you can have fun choosing photos at random and reminiscing all over again.
• Once you receive your pictures from your wedding photographer, design a high-quality photo book from Artifact Uprising that can double as a gorgeous coffee table book. I did this with my wedding photos, and I create a new book for each anniversary filled with that year’s pictures.

If you prefer to go the digital route, you can choose from simple cloud file storage — so you can easily view and share your photos from anywhere you’re connected to the internet. Or, you can choose from digital devices like the countertop-friendly Echo Show or the Samsung Frame that showcase your favorite shots on a regular rotation.

Preserving Your Wedding Flowers

Did you know you can turn your wedding bouquet and other floral arrangements into permanent keepsakes? This is something I so wish I had done with my own flowers — I think about the unique arrangement and colorful blooms all the time, and would love to be able to have them around to look at today. Luckily, you can learn from my mistake and choose a floral preservation option that speaks to your vision.

Etsy is a great place to find unique ways to keep your wedding flowers in your life. As long as you hold onto your bouquet, you can send it in to be preserved as a wall hanging, ornament, coaster, and so many other household items that can be displayed for years to come.

Preserving Other Wedding Keepsakes

Paper Goods Shadow Box

Beyond the photos and the flowers, there may be other items you want to preserve, like your invitations and other paper goods from your wedding. Pin them up in a shadow box and hang them somewhere you’ll see often.

Chuppah Glass Keepsakes

If you got married in a Jewish ceremony, you could also preserve the pieces from your Chuppah breaking glass. There are many businesses that offer products made from the mosaic of glass, such as decorative plates, mezuzahs, and framed artwork. I personally love this unique way of incorporating an otherwise tossed-away part of your wedding into your married life.

Wedding Keepsake Box

If you prefer a more compact, easy-to-store option for preserving your wedding memories, Crate & Barrel offers a keepsake box that has a spot for everything. Save your veil, invitations, bouquet petals, and important documents in one convenient spot, and keep it all organized with the included labels, drawers, and vertical storage.

Custom Wedding Art

You can also plan your wedding keepsakes ahead of time. Search for local artists in your area who can attend your wedding as a live painter or illustrator. You’ll end your wedding day with a piece of art showcasing a special moment on your special day. You could also ask them to paint or draw a particular element of your wedding day, such as your venue or floral arrangements.

Your Wedding Day

Your wedding day is one you want to remember forever, but it’s always good to have a safeguard against time. After all, when a marriage is good, you spend it making brand new memories that may, at some point, take the place of those smaller details you thought you’d never forget. If there’s anything to get sentimental about, it’s your wedding day, so don’t think twice about holding on to anything that feels meaningful in the moment.