A milestone worth celebrating
22nd Anniversary Gifts
Copper is both the traditional and the modern twenty-second anniversary gift.
Celebrate the love behind the milestone with a real rose preserved in 24K gold, a lasting keepsake of twenty-two years together.
The meaning behind your year
Gift ideas
Copper, Water and Spinel: Six Anniversary Gift Ideas
A few traditional, a few practical, and all of them better with a note attached.
A copper pan for two
Copper carries heat so well that a good copper saucepan is a pleasure to cook with. Make the first meal in it the one you cooked on your first night in your first home, however basic it was.
A rain chain
In Japan, rain chains called kusari-doi, or ‘chain-gutters’, guide water down from the roof in place of a downpipe. A copper one turns every downpour into a small waterfall, and covers the copper gift and the water theme at once.
A piece to leave out in the weather
Commission a small copper piece from a local metalworker, a bowl, a garden sculpture or your house name, and put it outside. Over the years it will weather to verdigris, the green of the Statue of Liberty, and look better every anniversary.
A light over the kitchen bench
Choose a copper pendant light for the kitchen, where most of a marriage actually happens. Pick it together and expect a long debate about how low it should hang.
A day on the water
Take a ferry somewhere you’ve never been, hire a tinny for a morning’s fishing, or find a rock pool and get in, whatever the temperature. Being a little cold and silly together is good for any marriage.
Spinel in a bright colour
Spinel is the twenty-second anniversary stone. GIA says the most valued colours are bright red, cobalt blue and vivid pink or orange, with pale lavender kinder to the budget, and it’s now an August birthstone too.
The 24K gold-dipped rose
A gold rose to celebrate twenty-two 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 twenty-two 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 22nd means
Why copper
for twenty-two years?
Copper is the gift for a twenty-second wedding anniversary, on both the traditional and the modern American lists. It bends without breaking, carries heat beautifully and weathers to a soft green with age: three handy skills after twenty-two years.
Why copper
Soft, warm and easy to shape
Copper is soft and easy to shape, and it carries heat and electricity exceptionally well. Builders and electricians have relied on it for generations, for roofs and for wiring.
Its name comes from Cyprus: the Romans called it aes cyprium, ‘metal of Cyprus’, which became cuprum. There’s even some copper in each of you, about 1.4 to 2.1 milligrams for every kilo you weigh.
Copper in Australia
The copper that saved a colony
In June 1845 a young shepherd, William Streair, carried samples of rich copper ore into the office of Henry Ayers. The find at Burra became known as the Monster Mine, and together with the mines at Kapunda it is credited with saving the struggling colony of South Australia.
For fifteen years Burra supplied 89 per cent of South Australia’s copper and 5 per cent of the world’s. So many miners arrived that in 1851 more than a third of the town lived in dugouts cut into the banks of Burra Creek. Burra, 156 kilometres north of Adelaide, is now a State Heritage town and makes a good weekend away.
Around the world
Copper, bronze and water
Spanish lists agree on copper, the bodas de cobre, while French lists give bronze, copper’s harder cousin. Japanese and Dutch lists don’t name the year at all.
Copper turns up elsewhere on the calendar, too: Emily Post gives it for the seventh anniversary and German lists for the twentieth, the Kupferhochzeit. Hallmark’s chart, meanwhile, gives the twenty-second a theme instead of a material: water.
22nd anniversary symbols
Copper, spinel and a flower of your choosing
Copper
Hallmark’s guide to the year lists copper as both the traditional and the modern twenty-second gift, and Te Ara’s list agrees. British lists and Emily Post’s classic list don’t name a twenty-second anniversary at all.
Spinel
Spinel crystals can grow so perfectly that in Burma they were said to be ‘polished by the spirits’. At 8 on the hardness scale, it’s tough enough for a ring that’s worn every day.
No set flower
No reliable list gives the twenty-second a flower. Ask your florist what’s at its best the week of your anniversary, and choose whatever smells nicest.
Celebrating the 22nd
Make a little time for the two of you
Have a long lunch at the winery where your wedding photos were taken, walk the track you used to run before the kids came along, or spend a slow Sunday morning in bed with the papers and nobody needing a lift. Twenty-two years gives you plenty to remember, and a good reason to make time for each other.
Twenty-two is a pair of twos, which suits the two of you. Make the day about doubles: two courses each, two films, two stops on a drive, with one of each chosen by each of you, no questions asked.
Then write a few lines in a card and keep it in the drawer with the others. Over the years, those cards add up to a record of your marriage that nobody else could write.
More romantic anniversary ideasWhat the 22nd means to others
Letters that capture twenty-two years
After twenty-two years, the big things usually get said in small ways: a cup of tea, a warmed-up car, the bins taken out in the rain. A letter puts a few of them into words for once. Here are three to borrow from, and three real stories about copper and the twenty-second anniversary.
Letters to inspire your own
We wrote these as examples. Borrow any line you like.
Dear Steve,
Twenty-two years ago you promised, in front of a hundred and forty people, that you’d always let me have the last chip. I’m sorry to report that you have broken this vow several times, most recently on Friday.
In every other way you’ve kept your word. You drove through the night when Dad was sick, sat up with Maddie through her HSC panic, and gave up Saturday golf for a year to help me get the shop started.
I love the man you’ve grown into, grey bits and all.
Happy anniversary. The last chip is mine.
All my love,
Kerry
Dear Lisa,
I was going to buy you something copper, because apparently that’s the rule this year, but the only copper thing I could think of was the old kettle you made me throw out in 2009. So you’re getting this letter, and dinner.
Twenty-two years have taken us from a flat in Footscray to a house with a vegie garden and a teenager who borrows my shirts. You’ve made every bit of it feel like an adventure, even the parts that were really just paperwork.
You’re still the first person I want to tell everything to.
Happy anniversary, love. I’ve booked the place by the river.
Love,
Greg
Dear Tony,
I won’t pretend this year was anything but rotten: the diagnosis, the treatment, the long drives to the hospital and back. You never once let me feel like a patient at home. I was still your wife, the one who cheats at Scrabble.
You learned to cook three things properly and one thing very badly. We will not speak of the fish pie.
The scans are clear, my hair is coming back curly, and I’d like to spend our twenty-second anniversary somewhere with a view and no waiting room.
Thank you for staying exactly who you are.
Yours, always,
Michelle
Worth reading
Real stories and finds about the twenty-two-year mark. Links open in a new tab.
Before transportation, many convicts smoothed down a copper ‘cartwheel’ penny and engraved it with a message for the people they were leaving behind. The National Museum of Australia holds 315 of these tokens, the largest collection in the world, and more than 50 are on show in its Landmarks gallery. Verses such as ‘when this you see, remember me’ were common.
Explore the collection at the National Museum of Australia ↗
David and Victoria Beckham marked 22 years of marriage on 4 July 2021 by digging out old photos and clips. David shared their famous all-purple wedding outfits from 1999 and a pair of matching leather looks from the same year, joking that they were ‘still matching outfits’. Victoria posted a montage of their wedding dance and the years since, from a kiss on the nose on the day he received his OBE to the two of them back on the dance floor at a family birthday.
The large red stone on the front cross of the Imperial State Crown, known as the Black Prince’s Ruby, is in fact a 170-carat spinel, the twenty-second anniversary stone. Legend says it was given to Edward, the Black Prince, in 1367 and worn by Henry V in his helmet at Agincourt in 1415. The Royal Collection admits the story is hard to prove, but a large spinel does appear in descriptions of historic state crowns.
22nd anniversary FAQ
