The silver wedding anniversary
25th Anniversary Gifts
Traditionally, the 25th wedding anniversary is the silver wedding anniversary, and nothing says 25th like a rose finished in pure silver. It joins the silver tradition of the 25th with the love a rose has always stood for.
If you don’t have a particular silver piece in mind for your partner, your parents or your friends, nothing beats a silver rose.
The meaning behind your year
Gift ideas
Silver, Family and Travel: Six Anniversary Gift Ideas
A few traditional, a few practical, and all of them better with a note attached.
A ‘Silver Anniversary’ rose
There’s a garden rose by that name, and planting it together is a lovely way to mark the day. Irises work too: planted in the garden, they come back every year.
Twenty-five voices
Ask twenty-five people for one short story each and collect them in a simple album. Leave a few blank pages for the next twenty-five years.
An inscription only they’ll understand
Engrave the coordinates of a special place, a private phrase, or the date of a turning point nobody else remembers. It often means more than the wedding date.
A trip with silver in the name
France’s Côte d’Argent, the ‘silver coast’; London’s Silver Vaults; or closer to home, Broken Hill, the Silver City. Or simply go back to where you honeymooned.
Then and now
Restore an early photo of the two of you and take a new one in the same spot. Frame them as a pair.
A silver wreath for the front door
Revive the old German custom: the children hang a wreath of greenery with a silver ‘25’ on the front door before the couple wake up.
The silver-dipped rose
A silver rose to celebrate twenty-five years together
A genuine rose, chosen for its shape and finished in pure silver. Each rose retains its individual shape and character, so no two are exactly alike—a lasting reminder of your first twenty-five 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 25th means
Why silver
for twenty-five years?
Silver has marked the 25th for well over a century. Here’s why, where the custom began and how it’s celebrated around the world: good material for a toast or a card.
Why silver
Bright, and worth looking after
Silver reflects more light than any other metal, up to 95 per cent when it’s polished. It also tarnishes (except our silver roses, which have an invisible tarnish-proof coating), then polishes straight back to a shine. That makes it an honest symbol for twenty-five years of marriage: not untouched by time, but cared for, and all the brighter for it.
Where it began
Silver brides and silver grooms
The custom comes from German-speaking Europe, where the wedding day was the ‘green’ wedding of myrtle, the 25th the silver wedding and the 50th the golden. By the 1800s the ‘silver bride’ was being crowned with a silver wreath, often by her friends. A 1921 etiquette book suggested silver-printed invitations, a white and silver table, and starting the party at the hour of the original wedding, with the bridal party invited back. Every one of those ideas still works.
Around the world
Arches, wreaths and morning songs
In Denmark, friends secretly build an arch of greenery over the couple’s front door and wake them with a song on the morning of their silver wedding. In northern Germany, neighbours dress the door with fir and a silver ‘25’. In Australia, official messages only begin at the 50th, so the 25th is one for family and friends to make their own.
25th anniversary symbols
Silver, sterling and the iris
Silver
Silver is the 25th anniversary gift on both the traditional and modern lists, and has been for well over a century.
Sterling silver
Look for sterling: it’s 92.5 per cent pure silver, with a little copper added for strength, because pure silver is too soft for everyday use. Fittingly, ‘sterling’ has meant something that stands up to a test since the 1600s.
The iris
The iris takes its name from the Greek goddess of the rainbow, and in Victorian flower language it meant ‘a message’. Violet irises, soft grey and white make an easy palette for a dinner or a party.
Celebrating the 25th
Make a little time for the two of you
Write down twenty-five memories, five from each five-year chapter. Put an ordinary moment beside every big one: the badly painted first room, the road trip that went wrong, the weekday ritual that somehow stuck.
Read the list together before any gifts are opened. It takes an evening to write and costs nothing, and it’s often the gift that gets kept.
Then plan something for just the two of you: dinner at a place you loved when you were first together, or a weekend away with the phones switched off.
More romantic anniversary ideasWhat the 25th means to others
Letters that capture twenty-five years
Twenty-five years in, there’s a lot you take as read. A silver anniversary is a good excuse to write some of it down. Here are three letters to borrow from, and three real silver anniversary stories.
Letters to inspire your own
We wrote these as examples. Borrow any line you like.
Dear Dan,
Twenty-five years. I did the maths this morning: that’s more than nine thousand days, and you’ve made me a coffee on most of them.
When we married we had a second-hand couch, a car that needed a push-start on cold mornings, and absolutely no idea what we were doing. I’m not sure we know much more now, but we’ve become very good at not knowing together.
I think about the year Lily was in and out of hospital, and how we took it in shifts so one of us was always with her. We barely saw each other for months, but every night there was a note on the bench in your terrible handwriting. I kept every one. They’re in the shoebox in the wardrobe, if you ever need proof that you’re a romantic.
You make me laugh when I least want to, which is your most irritating quality and your best one.
Here’s to the next twenty-five. I’ll keep making the decisions; you keep making the coffee.
Love you, always,
Bec
Dear Anna,
I’ve never been much good at saying this out loud, so I’m writing it down where you can’t see me go red.
Twenty-five years ago I stood under the gum tree in your parents’ back garden in Hobart, watched you walk towards me and thought: she’s going to work out she can do much better. If you ever did, you were kind enough not to mention it.
You’ve moved house with me six times. You’ve learned to like football, or pretended so well that it doesn’t matter. You held this family together the year I lost my job and couldn’t face getting out of bed, and you never once made me feel like less for it.
They say silver is the gift for twenty-five years because it shines brighter the more it’s looked after. I like that. We’ve had our share of tarnish, but you’ve always known how to bring the shine back.
I’d marry you again tomorrow. I’d even wear the same terrible suit.
All my love,
Chris
Dear Mum and Dad,
I’ve been around for twenty-three of your twenty-five years, so I think I’m qualified to say a few things.
You’ve always been a team, even when you were arguing about how to stack the dishwasher. You came to every netball game in the rain, every school play and every awkward parent-teacher night, usually together, usually with snacks.
Since I moved out, I’ve noticed how much of how I see the world comes from watching the two of you: Dad’s terrible puns, Mum’s rule that nobody goes to bed without saying goodnight properly, the way you both drop everything when one of us calls.
I know it hasn’t always been easy. I remember the year of the money worries, even though you thought you were hiding it. What I remember most is that you never let it make you unkind to each other.
Thank you for showing me what a good marriage looks like. It’s a high bar, and I’m grateful for it. Happy silver anniversary.
Love you both,
Emma xx
Worth reading
Real stories and finds about the twenty-five-year mark. Links open in a new tab.
A wife writes to her husband on their 25th: a blind date, a proposal within weeks, then years of illness through which he never once wavered, and the long-awaited daughter who followed.
Jen and Davide married young, split up and married other people. Years later they found their way back to each other, and remarried on the date that would have been their silver anniversary.
Kim Wilson and her husband marked 25 years and three children with a week in New Zealand. She packed a box of conversation cards in case they ran out of things to say. They never opened it.
25th anniversary FAQ
