A milestone worth celebrating
19th Anniversary Gifts
Bronze is both the traditional and the modern nineteenth anniversary gift, with aquamarine as an alternative.
Celebrate the love behind the milestone with a real rose preserved in 24K gold, a lasting keepsake of nineteen years together.
The meaning behind your year
Gift ideas
Bronze, Aquamarine and Cretonne: Six Anniversary Gift Ideas
A few traditional, a few practical, and all of them better with a note attached.
A bell by the back door
Hang a small bronze bell by the back door or on the verandah. Use it to call everyone in for dinner or, after nineteen years, to call a truce.
A bronze-spotting walk
Hallmark suggests a walk through a sculpture garden to look for bronze. Make a game of it: whoever spots the most buys lunch, and the other one reads every plaque aloud.
Your hands, cast in bronze
A casting studio or sculptor can make a bronze cast of your two hands joined together. Wear your wedding rings for it, and one day the grandchildren will argue over who gets to keep it.
Re-cover the old armchair
In the spirit of the cretonne wedding, give the armchair you’ve had since your first flat a new cover in a strong printed cotton. Choose the fabric together, and agree beforehand that nobody can veto florals.
A pearl-handled knife
For the mother-of-pearl wedding, hunt through antique and op shops for an old butter knife or cake fork with a pearl handle. It’s pretty, it’s useful, and it will come out at every birthday from now on.
Aquamarine for every day
GIA says the finest aquamarine is a moderately strong dark blue to slightly greenish blue. At 7.5 to 8 on the hardness scale it’s tough enough for a ring worn daily, and it’s also the birthstone for March.
The 24K gold-dipped rose
A gold rose to celebrate nineteen years together
A genuine rose preserved and finished in 24 karat gold over 60 steps and many months, then polished by hand. Each rose retains its individual shape and character, so no two are exactly alike—a lasting reminder of your first nineteen 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 29 cm long; display case 34 cm long
What the 19th means
Why bronze
for nineteen years?
Bronze is the gift for a nineteenth wedding anniversary, and it’s both the traditional and the modern choice. It’s the metal people pick for things that have to last outdoors and keep working, from church bells to ship propellers, which is a fair description of a marriage nearing twenty.
Why bronze
The metal of bells and boats
Bronze is mostly copper with a little tin, and people have been making it for more than five thousand years. Bells are cast from a high-tin bronze called bell metal, nearly every professional cymbal is bronze, and ship propellers often still are, because some bronzes stand up to seawater.
Its other strength is that it only tarnishes skin-deep. Once a thin layer of oxide forms on the surface, the metal underneath is protected, which is one reason bronze is still a favourite for statues that stand out in all weathers.
Where it began
A year the old lists left blank
None of the anniversary lists printed in 1876, 1910 or 1922 mention a nineteenth anniversary: they go straight from fifteen to twenty. Debrett’s British list still does, and Japan’s list names every year only up to the fifteenth.
In 1937 America’s National Retail Jeweler Association filled in most of the missing years, and later lists built on its work. That makes the nineteenth one of the newer anniversaries, with its gifts settled long after silver and golden weddings were familiar.
Around the world
Cretonne, mother-of-pearl and honeysuckle
France and Germany share an unusual name for the nineteenth, the cretonne wedding, after a strong printed cotton that’s heavier than chintz. German lists also call it the Perlmutterhochzeit, the mother-of-pearl wedding.
Dutch lists give linen, and Spanish lists give honeysuckle, the bodas de madreselva. In Victorian flower language honeysuckle meant ‘bonds of love’, which is a nice thing to have climbing over the back fence.
19th anniversary symbols
Bronze, aquamarine and chrysanthemum
Bronze
Bronze turns up three times on Hallmark’s list, at the 8th, 19th and 32nd anniversaries. For the nineteenth it’s both the traditional and the modern gift, so there’s no need to choose.
Aquamarine
Its name comes from the Latin for seawater. It was said to calm the waves and keep sailors safe, and was once thought to make marriages happier, which is a lot to ask of one stone.
Chrysanthemum
Hallmark names the chrysanthemum as the 19th anniversary flower. In Victorian flower language a red one said ‘I love you’ and a white one stood for truth, but skip the yellow: it meant slighted love.
Celebrating the 19th
Make a little time for the two of you
Go back to the pub where you had your first drink together, eat fish and chips on the beach at sunset, or clear a Sunday for a long lunch with nowhere else to be. Nineteen years gives you plenty to remember, and a good reason to make time for each other.
Nineteen is the last anniversary before the big one. Spend part of the evening planning your twentieth together, where you’d go, who you’d invite and what you’d skip, then put the date in both calendars before anything else can claim it.
Whatever you plan, slip a short note somewhere unexpected: the glovebox, the toolbox or the book on their bedside table.
More romantic anniversary ideasWhat the 19th means to others
Letters that capture nineteen years
Nineteen years in, you can finish each other’s sentences, and now and then you wish you couldn’t. A letter lets you say a whole sentence of your own, and mean every word. Here are three to borrow from, and three real stories about the nineteenth anniversary and its stone.
Letters to inspire your own
We wrote these as examples. Borrow any line you like.
Dear Andrew,
Nineteen years ago it was forty-one degrees in Adelaide, your collar stuck to your neck, and the cake leaned so far the photographer called it ‘artistic’. You laughed through the whole day, so I did too.
This year you did the school run every morning so I could start the new job, sat through Ellie’s Year 10 drama monologue four times, and drove four hours to collect a second-hand fridge because I’d found a bargain. The fridge mostly works.
I don’t say it enough: you’re the steadiest person I know, and the funniest, which is a rare pair.
Happy anniversary. Next year we celebrate somewhere cooler.
All my love,
Fiona
Dear Mel,
On our first date you told me you’d never marry a Collingwood supporter. Nineteen years later, I’d like it noted that I’ve kept my side of the deal and only watch the games in the garage.
This was the year of your mum’s move, the leaking shower and the dog’s operation, and you organised all of it from a spreadsheet you won’t let me see. You still made it to every one of Sam’s cricket games.
You make our house run, and you make it a good place to come home to. I’d like the next nineteen years, please, and the spreadsheet password.
Happy anniversary.
Love,
Luke
Dear Raj,
At ten past nine last night we looked at each other across the dishwasher and realised it was our anniversary. Neither of us had a card. You said, ‘Well, that makes us even,’ and we laughed so hard the dog left the room.
I think that might be the best sign of nineteen years. We’ve stopped keeping count. We just turn up, every day, for each other and the kids, and get on with it.
So here is your card, one day late, and a promise to book the dinner we forgot. Your pick, my shout.
Love always,
Anjali
Worth reading
Real stories and finds about the nineteen-year mark. Links open in a new tab.
In July 1951 two Kwinana couples shared one party: Mr and Mrs Len Townsend for their nineteenth anniversary and Mr and Mrs Ramus for their thirteenth. More than thirty friends danced, joined a sing-song and played games that caused plenty of laughter, then both couples stood in the middle of a ring while everyone congratulated them. Mr Townsend’s present to his wife was an electric log fire, and the report sums it up: ‘The fun was great and the supper good.’
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert married in February 1840, and their children made cards and drawings for them on important dates. For the nineteenth anniversary, young Prince Arthur painted an angel dropping flowers on his parents’ initials and wished them ‘many years of happiness’. The Queen kept it in an album of gifts from her nine children.
The Dom Pedro aquamarine was cut from a Brazilian crystal of more than 45 kilograms, found in the late 1980s, which broke into three pieces as it was dug out. A German gem artist shaped the largest piece into a tall obelisk, deliberately leaving the growth lines at its base as part of its story. It now stands about nine metres from the Hope Diamond in Washington.
19th anniversary FAQ
