The full list
Anniversary gifts by year, 1 to 60
In short
The traditional list climbs in durability, paper, cotton, leather, wood, and ends at diamond. The modern list was assembled separately in twentieth-century America and pairs each year with a manufactured object instead. Year one is paper traditionally and a clock in the modern list. Both are in the table below, along with the flower and colour for each year.
| Year | Traditional | Modern | Flower | Colour |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Paper | Clocks | Carnation | Gold, yellow |
| 2 | Cotton | China | Lily of the valley | Red, linen white |
| 3 | Leather | Crystal, glass | Sunflower | White, jade green |
| 4 | Linen, silk / fruit and flowers | Appliances | Hydrangea, geranium | Blue, green |
| 5 | Wood | Silverware | Daisy | Blue, pink |
| 6 | Iron / candy | Wood | Calla lily | Purple, turquoise |
| 7 | Wool, copper | Desk sets | Freesia | Onyx, yellow |
| 8 | Bronze, pottery | Linens, lace | Lilac | Bronze, tourmaline |
| 9 | Pottery, willow | Leather | Bird of paradise | Terracotta |
| 10 | Tin, aluminium | Diamond jewellery | Daffodil | Silver, blue |
| 11 | Steel | Fashion jewellery | Tulip | Turquoise |
| 12 | Silk, linen | Pearls | Peony | Oyster white |
| 13 | Lace | Textiles, furs | Chrysanthemum | White |
| 14 | Ivory (agate today) | Gold jewellery | Dahlia | Opal |
| 15 | Crystal | Watches | Rose | Red, ruby |
| 16 | Not established | Silver holloware | Magnolia | Silver |
| 17 | Not established | Furniture | Carnation | Yellow |
| 18 | Not established | Porcelain | Orchid | Blue |
| 19 | Not established | Bronze | Chrysanthemum | Bronze |
| 20 | China | Platinum | Aster, day lily | Emerald green |
| 21 | Not established | Brass, nickel | Iris | Orange |
| 22 | Not established | Copper | Rose | Copper green |
| 23 | Not established | Silver plate | Rose | Imperial topaz |
| 24 | Not established | Musical instruments | Queen Anne’s lace | Lavender |
| 25 | Silver | Silver | Iris | Silver |
| 30 | Pearl | Diamond | Lily | Pearl white |
| 35 | Coral | Jade | Coral bells | Coral, jade |
| 40 | Ruby | Ruby | Gladiolus | Ruby red |
| 45 | Sapphire | Sapphire | Blue iris | Sapphire blue |
| 50 | Gold | Gold | Yellow rose, violet | Gold |
| 55 | Emerald | Emerald | Emerald-green orchid | Emerald green |
| 60 | Diamond | Diamond | Diamond-white orchid | Diamond white |
Shaded rows are the anniversaries people most often mark with a keepsake print, and the year links to a guide for it. Years 16–19 and 21–24 have no widely agreed traditional material, which is why the modern list is the one usually quoted for them.
A caveat worth knowing
These lists are not standardised
Published anniversary lists disagree with each other, and anyone presenting one as the single correct version is overstating it. The traditional sequence is old and European, assembled piecemeal, the early years were established first, the middle years filled in much later. The modern list was compiled in the United States in the twentieth century, partly by retail associations, which is why it reads as a shopping list of manufactured categories.
So there are real disagreements. Year four is linen and silk in most British lists and fruit and flowers in many American ones. Year six is iron traditionally, but candy in some US versions. Fourteen was ivory, which almost everyone now substitutes with agate or something ivory-coloured.
Practically: use the list as a prompt, not a rule. Nobody has ever been disappointed to receive something thoughtful in the wrong material.
The pattern
Why the materials get harder
The sequence is a metaphor, and a fairly blunt one. Paper tears. Cotton frays but washes. Leather wears in. Wood holds a shape. Tin bends without breaking. Silver needs polishing to stay bright. Gold does not tarnish at all. Diamond cannot be scratched by anything except itself.
Read in order it is a reasonable description of a long marriage, which is presumably why it survived. It also explains why the first year gets the most fragile material on the list: a first anniversary is a beginning, not a proof.
Marking any of them
A map is not only a first-year gift
A printed map suits the paper year for the obvious reason, but the longer anniversaries are where it gets more interesting, because there is more to put on it. Maps have been made for a sixth anniversary, a twentieth with five children on it, and a forty-sixth that ran from Cape Town in 1980 to grandchildren in Australia.
Every map carries five to eight stops, so a long marriage becomes a question of choosing the turning points rather than listing the decades, which is the harder and better exercise.
- The first anniversary: paper, the full guide
- Tenth · twentieth · twenty-fifth (silver) · fortieth (ruby) · fiftieth (golden)
- A gift for your parents’ anniversary, including the gold fiftieth
- Milestone ideas, what to actually put on it