A milestone worth celebrating
15th Anniversary Gifts
Crystal is the traditional gift and watches the modern theme. Ruby red is the traditional fifteenth anniversary colour.
A genuine ruby red rose, finished with a lustrous glaze and 24 karat gold, is a lasting way to mark your first fifteen years together.
The meaning behind your year
Gift ideas
Crystal, Watches and Ruby: Six Anniversary Gift Ideas
A few traditional, a few practical, and all of them better with a note attached.
Glasses to replace the broken ones
Austria’s government guide to anniversaries suggests glass and crystal for the fifteenth, since a few glasses have probably broken by now. Choose a pair of crystal wine or champagne glasses, engraved with your wedding date, and save them for anniversaries.
A vase made by hand
Buy a vase or bowl from a local glass artist instead of a department store, so there’s only one like it. Ask whether they’ll make one in the colours of your wedding flowers.
Blow your own glass
Book a beginner glassblowing class for two and make a paperweight each. They’ll sit on your desks for years as proof you can still try something new together.
Your vows in glass
Have a line from your vows, or the date and place you married, engraved on a crystal block or a glass photo frame. Put it somewhere you’ll both see it every morning.
A watch with words on the back
For the modern gift, choose a watch that suits how they really live, dressy or rugged, and have the case back engraved with your date and a few words only the two of you will understand.
Ruby for every day
Only diamond is harder than ruby, so it suits jewellery that never comes off. Think of a band set with small rubies, or studs for someone who sleeps in their earrings. It’s July’s birthstone too.
The ruby red glazed rose
A ruby red rose to celebrate fifteen years together
A genuine ruby red rose with a lustrous glazed finish, its petals and leaves edged in 24 karat gold and its stem plated in matching gold. Each rose retains its individual shape and character, so no two are exactly alike—a lasting reminder of your first fifteen years together.
- Includes a certificate of authenticity
- Presented in a luxurious display case, inside a gloss white gift box bearing our debossed gold leaf logo
- A timeless symbol of love, preserved to keep forever
- Rose approximately 30 cm long; display case 34 cm long
What the 15th means
Why crystal
for fifteen years?
Crystal is the traditional gift for a fifteenth wedding anniversary. It is clear and bright and made to last, which suits a marriage that has reached fifteen years.
Why crystal
Clear, bright and worth looking after
Fifteen years is long enough to see each other clearly. You know the moods, the habits and the reasons behind them, and you still choose each other.
Crystal is tough enough for years of dinners and washing up, yet one careless knock can end it. Fifteen years in, a marriage is much the same: strong, but never something to take for granted.
Where it began
The first gift taken seriously
The crystal wedding was a familiar name by the 1890s. Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, revised in 1895, lists it for the fifteenth anniversary, and a 1910 American etiquette book named the wooden, tin and crystal weddings as the ones most often celebrated.
Emily Post’s Etiquette of 1922 shows why fifteen stood out. Paper, wooden and tin presents were ‘seldom anything but jokes’, she wrote, but crystal was the first anniversary that guests were likely to take seriously.
Around the world
Glass, bottles and rock crystal
In Germany and Austria the fifteenth is the Kristallhochzeit or gläserne Hochzeit, the crystal or glass wedding. Some areas call it the Flaschenhochzeit, the bottle wedding, and decorate the couple’s front garden with glass bottles or a garland of them.
French, Italian and Spanish lists also give crystal, so in France it is the noces de cristal. Dutch lists offer crystal or porcelain, and in Japan the fifteenth is suishōkonshiki, the rock crystal wedding.
15th anniversary symbols
Crystal, ruby and roses
Crystal and watches
Crystal is the 15th anniversary gift on British, American and older Australian lists, so this is one year they all agree on. Watches are the modern alternative, a nod to the time you’ve already spent together.
Ruby
Ruby is red corundum, coloured by traces of chromium, and the finest stones glow in sunlight because they fluoresce red. In Sanskrit it was ratnaraj, the king of gems. GIA gives ruby to both the 15th and 40th anniversaries, while older Australian lists keep it for the 40th, the ruby wedding.
Rose
The rose is the 15th anniversary flower on Emily Post’s list. In the language of flowers, a red rose says ‘I love you’, a pink one stands for happiness and a white one for innocence.
Celebrating the 15th
Make a little time for the two of you
Book a table where you had your wedding dinner, take the drive you did on your honeymoon, or dig out the wedding DVD, if you still own something that plays it. Fifteen years gives you plenty to remember, and a good reason to make time for each other.
If you like a theme, borrow the table Harper’s Bazar suggested for a crystal wedding in 1905: a mirror laid flat in the centre and edged with ferns and daisies, glass candlesticks, and ice-cream served on glass plates. It works as well for two as it does for twenty.
Keep the rest simple. A note tucked under their glass, saying what fifteen years has taught you about them, will be remembered long after dessert.
More romantic anniversary ideasWhat the 15th means to others
Letters that capture fifteen years
Fifteen years in, a lot goes unsaid because you both assume it’s already known. A letter is a good place to say it anyway. Here are three to borrow from, and three real stories about the crystal anniversary.
Letters to inspire your own
We wrote these as examples. Borrow any line you like.
Dear Luke,
Fifteen years ago you stood at the front of a little church in Ballarat, in a suit your mum had taken up the night before, grinning like you’d just won the meat tray. You still grin like that when I walk into a room. I’ve stopped pretending not to notice.
Since then we’ve had three kids, two mortgages and one bathroom renovation we’ve agreed never to mention again. You’ve done more 5am swimming squad runs than I have, and you’ve never once brought it up.
The thing I love most is something I didn’t know to look for when I married you: you’re kind when you’re tired, which is the hardest time to be kind.
Bring on the next fifteen. I’ll even let you choose the paint.
All my love,
Hannah
Dear Nadia,
On our wedding day you had a five-year plan, colour-coded. I had a second-hand hatchback and a lot of confidence. Your plan won, and I’m very glad it did.
In fifteen years you’ve moved us to Perth for your job and back again for my mum, taught both girls to ride a bike on the same stretch of footpath, and talked me out of at least four bad haircuts.
Nobody hands out medals for the jobs you do, so here’s mine: for the forms signed, the birthdays remembered, and the way you always leave me the last of the good coffee.
I’ve booked the babysitter for Saturday night. You don’t have to plan a thing.
Love,
Sam
To us, at fifteen,
The first time, we said the celebrant’s words and got through them on adrenaline. This time we’ve written our own and promised to keep them under a minute, because Nonna refuses to sit down for it.
Fifteen years has changed the wording. At twenty-something we promised forever. Now we promise smaller, harder things: to hear the whole story before trying to fix it, to say sorry before the other one has to ask, and to leave the last of the milk for whoever needs it more.
Some things haven’t changed at all. We still laugh at the wrong moments, still read bits of the news out loud to each other, and still think the other one got the better deal.
See you at the end of the aisle. Again.
Love,
Us, take two
Worth reading
Real stories and finds about the fifteen-year mark. Links open in a new tab.
When Ken Hay and his wife reached their crystal wedding, friends gathered at their home in Lawley Street, Collie, for an evening where every guest had to contribute an item to the program. There were humorous monologues and a comic sketch, and the paper notes that some unexpected talent was revealed. The couple were given a pair of cut crystal vases, and Mrs Hay passed a bouquet to her sister, whose own eleventh anniversary had fallen the day before.
This chapter from a 1910 American etiquette book plans an entire crystal wedding party. It suggests invitations written on clear celluloid, a block of ice hollowed out to hold flowers in the middle of the table, and a soap-bubble contest with four judges and glass prizes for whoever blows the most bubbles. It even gives the recipe for the bubble mixture.
Rebecca wrote this on the day she and her husband, Andy, reached fifteen years, in the house they’ve shared for all of them. Her lessons are short and sensible: say things kindly instead of bottling them up, give each other time to cool off, and keep laughing. The idea worth borrowing is Wine Fridays, a catch-up on the couch that they’ve kept every week since their first baby.
15th anniversary FAQ
