Wedding Anniversary Gifts by Year

Wedding Anniversary Gifts and Traditions

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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Anniversary Jewelry Collection

• Ogee Collection
• Diamond Facet Pendant
• Harmony Heart Pendant

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