The ultimate guide to anniversary gift ideas
The ultimate anniversary gift, sounds intimidating right? It shouldn’t. Anniversaries are about celebrating the joys experienced, the challenges overcome and the bond strengthened between you and your partner as the years pass. It should be personal yes, intimidating, no.
I distinctly remember my grandparents’ 40th wedding anniversary. I was only a small child, but it was great fun and they had red heart-shaped decorations everywhere – forty years is the ruby anniversary after all. It was a lovely family event that celebrated love in all its forms. While it was hard for me at about the age of six to comprehend that someone could be married for that long, it was also really wonderful to learn that with each anniversary there was a special theme to celebrate each year.
Now, while some will see these as old-fashioned, quaint, or even perhaps a little clichéd, this is a subjective interpretation of the symbols. They can be used more like a ‘cheat sheet’ or a ‘phone a friend’ for help, in choosing a meaningful, personal and special anniversary gift.
Many of us have heard of the traditional anniversary themes which date back to the middle ages, the ones which include paper for the first anniversary, cotton for the second year, leather for the third etc. These have also been updated to what is known as the modern list and there is also a list for colour, and these can all differ depending on where you read them. All these lists can make it really confusing to know which theme to choose and which to follow if indeed you do year-on-year or even intermittently. Do you stick to traditional or modern or switch between the two?
Ah, these themes were supposed to make life a little easier! Well, thankfully there is one theme list that has stood the test of time, is consistent across many cultures and it is arguably the most special and adaptable of them all – gemstones.
