The Platinum Anniversary
20th Anniversary Gifts
The modern 20th wedding anniversary is the platinum anniversary, and nothing says 20th like a real rose dipped in pure platinum. It joins the year’s precious metal with the love a rose has always stood for, which is why Good Housekeeping chose our platinum rose for its 20th anniversary gift guide.
If you don’t have a particular platinum piece in mind for your partner, your parents or your friends, nothing beats a platinum rose.
The meaning behind your year
Gift ideas
China, Platinum and Emerald: Six Anniversary Gift Ideas
A few traditional, a few practical, and all of them better with a note attached.
Complete the wedding china
Replace the plates that broke over the years, or track down the pattern from your wedding list, even if it’s been discontinued. Specialist china-matching services can often find old patterns.
A platinum eternity ring
An eternity ring is a classic gift for a milestone anniversary. In platinum, it suits the 20th perfectly, and it’s worn every day.
A cup that’s only theirs
One beautiful china cup for their morning coffee or tea, which nobody else is allowed to use. Small, daily, and noticed every time.
A ‘platinum record’ of your wedding song
A framed platinum disc of the song you danced to at your wedding, engraved with the date.
Emerald, the 20th anniversary stone
Emerald earrings or a pendant set in platinum bring the year’s gemstone and metal together. Jewellers call the tiny inclusions inside an emerald its ‘garden’.
A piece from a local potter
Commission a bowl or platter from a local ceramicist, with your names and wedding date on the base. You’ll use it every time there’s a crowd for dinner.
The platinum-dipped rose
A platinum rose to celebrate twenty years together
A genuine rose preserved in pure platinum, one of Earth’s rarest elements, with a brilliant, mirror-like finish. Each rose retains its individual shape and character, so no two are exactly alike—a lasting reminder of your first twenty years together.
- Includes a certificate of authenticity
- Presented in a luxurious display case, inside a gloss white gift box bearing our debossed silver leaf logo
- A timeless symbol of love, preserved to keep forever
- Rose approximately 29 cm long; display case 34 cm long
What the 20th means
Why china and platinum
for twenty years?
Twenty years earns two symbols: china for the home you’ve built, and platinum for something rarer. The stories behind them make good material for a toast or a card.
The traditional gift
Why china?
China looks delicate, but fine bone china is one of the strongest ceramics there is, which is why it can be made so thin. Beautiful, and much tougher than it looks: a fair description of twenty years of marriage.
It has a story worth telling, too. Porcelain was first made in China nearly two thousand years ago, and when Europe finally learned the secret at Meissen in the early 1700s, it was prized as ‘white gold’. English bone china followed a few decades later.
The modern gift
Why platinum?
Platinum never tarnishes, it’s heavier than gold, and it melts at a temperature more than 700 degrees hotter. Only about one-twentieth as much platinum is mined each year as gold.
For 130 years, from 1889 to 2019, the world’s kilogram was defined by a small platinum cylinder kept near Paris. When people want something that won’t change, they reach for platinum.
Around the world
The porcelain wedding
In Germany and Austria, the 20th is the Porzellanhochzeit, the porcelain wedding. In France it’s the noces de porcelaine, and in Japan it’s the porcelain wedding too. One German custom is to replace the everyday dinner service with a new one.
It makes a neat bookend. At a German Polterabend, the night before a wedding, guests smash porcelain for luck and the couple sweep it up together. Twenty years on, the china gets replaced.
20th anniversary symbols
China, emerald, asters and day lilies
China and platinum
China has been the 20th anniversary gift since at least the 1880s, when it appeared in Webster’s dictionary. Platinum was added later as the modern gift.
Emerald
Emerald is the 20th anniversary gemstone, long linked with spring and renewal. Cleopatra was famous for her love of emeralds.
Asters and day lilies
Fittingly for the china anniversary, the aster most florists use is the China aster, native to China. Day lilies each bloom for a single day, and in China they have long been the flower for forgetting sorrow.
Celebrating the 20th
Make a little time for the two of you
Plenty of couples take the trip they’ve been putting off, often while the grandparents mind the kids: an island escape, a balloon over the Hunter Valley, a campervan lap of Tasmania or a sunrise walk up Kosciuszko.
Others bring the wedding back to the table: cupcakes in the wedding-cake flavour, the wedding menu cooked again at home, or a blue and white china dinner, an idea that goes back to a 1910 etiquette book.
Whichever you choose, leave a few lines on their pillow or in their bag. After twenty years, a note in your own handwriting still means more than most presents.
More romantic anniversary ideasWhat the 20th means to others
Letters that capture twenty years
Twenty years in, the busy years can crowd out the things you mean to say. A letter makes room for them. Here are three to borrow from, and three real stories and finds about the twenty-year mark.
Letters to inspire your own
We wrote these as examples. Borrow any line you like.
Dear Matt,
Twenty years, and you still sing in the car as if nobody can hear you. Everybody can hear you. I wouldn’t change it.
When we married, I thought love was the big gestures: the proposal on the beach, the first dance, the honeymoon in Bali where we both got sunburnt on day one. Twenty years on, I know it’s the small things. You warming up the car on frosty mornings. You making my tea exactly right without asking. You quietly fixing the things I didn’t know were broken.
We’ve had our rough patches. The year I went back to study, I wasn’t easy to be around, and you never made me feel I had to be. You just made dinner and sat with me.
After twenty years, you’re still the person I most want to tell things to. That feels like the whole secret, really.
Happy anniversary. Let’s keep going.
Love,
Jess
Dear Kate,
Twenty years ago you said yes, and then you said, “But we’re not having a big wedding.” We had a hundred and forty guests. It was the first of many compromises, and I’m still not sure who won.
So much has changed since then. Two kids, three houses, one very badly behaved dog, and more school lunches than either of us could count. Somewhere in the middle of it all, I stopped noticing how much you do, and I want to fix that now.
You remember every birthday, every dentist appointment and every permission note. You sat up with Sam the whole night before his exams. You still check on all of us before you go to sleep, even the dog.
You’ll notice the china cabinet is full again. Those are the three wedding plates I broke over the years, finally replaced. It only took me twenty years.
The last few years have been busy, and we haven’t had much time that’s just ours. That’s going to change. The weekend is booked, the kids are with your mum, and I promise to check my phone no more than twice.
You’re still my favourite person. Here’s to twenty more.
All my love,
Ben
Dear Mum and Dad,
Happy twentieth anniversary. Dad said we had to write something, so here it is.
We don’t really remember a time before you were married, mostly because we didn’t exist. But we’ve noticed some things. Dad still makes Mum a coffee every morning, even when she says she doesn’t want one. Mum still laughs at Dad’s jokes, which is honestly very generous of her. You hold hands at the shops, which is embarrassing, but also kind of nice.
We know you’ve both worked really hard for us. We know about the extra shifts, and the holidays you didn’t take so we could do rep footy and dance. We don’t say thank you enough, so: thank you.
This weekend, please go away, have fun and don’t worry about us. We will (probably) not burn the house down.
Love,
Josh and Ella
Worth reading
Real stories and finds about the twenty-year mark. Links open in a new tab.
Australian-born writer Amelia Wilson’s 20th anniversary getaway was snowed out, and a roadside motel turned into one of the best nights she and her husband have had together. Her twenty lessons follow, and the one she rates above all is simply liking each other.
In September 1925 Mr and Mrs A. Martindale marked twenty years of marriage, then known as a china wedding, with an evening party at their home in Sandy Bay, Hobart. Guests played cards and music until late before going in to a supper room hung with yellow and white streamers and spring flowers to match. The couple’s best man proposed their health, their bridesmaid was toasted all over again, and the night ended with everyone singing ‘For They Are Jolly Good Fellows’.
When William Maidment and Bessie Kemp married in South Australia in 1901, one of their wedding presents was a forty-piece white china tea set with scalloped edges, gold rims and a brown flower pattern, enough to serve afternoon tea to twelve. In 1907 the couple and their young son moved west to Capel, where they bought a 640-acre farm called Paringa. The set was handed down through three generations of the family and is now cared for by the Busselton Historical Society in Western Australia.
20th anniversary FAQ
