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Wedding Anniversary Gifts and Traditions
Need some ideas for a special anniversary gift? ... well, with a name like "Wedding Anniversary Gifts by Year" you know we're here to help!
We offer unique and meaningful gift ideas by anniversary year. Modern and traditional anniversary gift lists suggest specific materials for each year. So in our gift background sections, we'll tell you what these are, and why. Just pick any year on our Keypad to get started...
- 1st Anniversary..........Paper
- 2nd Anniversary.........Cotton
- 3rd Anniversary..........Leather
- 4th Anniversary..........Fruit or Flowers
- 5th Anniversary .........Wood
- 6th Anniversary.........Iron or Candy
- 7th Anniversary.........Wool or Copper
- 8th Anniversary .........Bronze or Pottery
- 9th Anniversary..........Willow or Pottery
- 10th Anniversary........Aluminum or Tin
- 11th Anniversary........Jewelry
- 12th Anniversary........Silk or Linen
- 13th Anniversary........Lace
- 14th Anniversar.........Ivory
- 15th Anniversary........Crystal
- 20th Anniversary........China or Platinum
- 25th Anniversary........Silver
- 30th Anniversary........Pearl
- 35th Anniversary........Coral
- 40th Anniversary........Ruby
- 45th Anniversary........Sapphire
- 50th Anniversary........Gold
- 60th Anniversary........Diamonds
The origin of associating special materials to wedding anniversaries dates back hundreds of years, during medieval times in Europe...
Giving something silver for a 25th wedding anniversary, or gold for a 50th anniversary seemed right, if you could afford it. It seemed appropriate to celebrate a milestone occasion with a gift of rarity and value. Silver is a precious metal, lovely and yet slightly malleable. Gold is rarer still and even more precious. It’s why we now call them the silver anniversary and gold anniversary.
In the early 1900s, gift lists were gradually created, matching a material to each anniversary year. Though parts are commercial in origin, a century later it’s all taken on the patina of tradition. They’re a nice place to start when looking for an anniversary gift for any year.
There is a traditional gift list and a modern gift list. These lists have remained relatively unchanged over the decades. The beauty of these wedding anniversary gift lists, is they suggest a different material for each year. It gives you a starting point for choosing a gift, and ties it into tradition… If you decide to use them for one or more of your anniversaries, be creative. The material can be the gift itself, or the wrapping for a different gift. It can be most anything…
As to the meanings behind the materials chosen for each year, they’re open to speculation. In general, the gift material chosen for each successive wedding anniversary year seems to grow both in value and durability. This seems especially so for the major years of the traditional gift list. They have the most logical progression of materials and symbolism…
From paper for a 1st anniversary, wood for a 5th anniversary, and tin for a 10th anniversary, to silver for a 25th anniversary and gold for a 50th anniversary. It seems appropriate for affordability of the gift itself (especially when a couple is just starting out). It also seems right symbolically, since the later anniversary years inherently define a more durable relationship. They are harder to achieve, rarer and therefore more precious. The following is a combination of research, intuition, and speculation…
The symbolism behind the gifts of the many anniversaries in between, take a bit more imagination. Of course they still have the patina of age, since they’ve been around for many, many years. And the materials chosen for these anniversaries are equally useful as a starting point for gift giving.
Within the modern gift list especially, there’s a tendency for some of the gifts suggested in the earlier years to be more practical. The logic, most likely, is that funds are shorter in the early years of marriage, so practical may be more important than romantic. It also appears that they are not meant exclusively for men to get for their wives. Many of these early gifts are shared household gifts, such as china or silverware. Others such as desk accessories, originally would have been meant for a husband. Of course, over the following decades, it’s become an equally appropriate gift for either spouse.
Want more background? Just choose any wedding anniversary year with our ”Anniversary Year Keypad”, and then move your mouse over “Gift Background”…
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