A milestone worth celebrating
26th Anniversary Gifts
Jade is the traditional twenty-sixth anniversary gift, with art as the modern alternative.
Celebrate the love behind the milestone with a real rose preserved in 24K gold, a lasting keepsake of twenty-six years together.
The meaning behind your year
Gift ideas
Jade, Art and Portraits: Six Anniversary Gift Ideas
A few traditional, a few practical, and all of them better with a note attached.
A painting from a student show
Hallmark suggests buying from a local gallery, an art fair or a student sale. Art school graduate exhibitions are a good hunting ground: the work is original, the prices are kind, and the artist may be well known by your fiftieth.
Sit for a double portrait
Hallmark’s splurge idea is having your portrait painted and framed. Ask a local artist to paint the two of you from a photo you both like, or from life if you can sit still that long.
A canvas each
Hallmark suggests painting together, at a class or by following an online lesson. Paint each other, swap at the end, and hang both, however they turn out.
Frame the fridge art properly
Dig out the best drawing your children ever did, the crayon family portrait or the dinosaur with too many legs, and have it professionally framed. After twenty-six years, it’s earned a proper wall.
Jade from South Australia
In 1965 jade was found in the Minbrie Ranges near Cowell in South Australia, and more than 100 outcrops have since been found across about nine square kilometres. A pendant or cufflinks in Australian jade keep the gift close to home.
A jade plant for the windowsill
Hallmark suggests a jade plant, the South African succulent also called the money plant or lucky plant. It’s known for growing from a cutting or even a stray leaf, so you can pot up babies for the kids.
The 24K gold-dipped rose
A gold rose to celebrate twenty-six 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-six 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 26th means
Why jade and art
for twenty-six years?
Jade and art are the gifts for a twenty-sixth wedding anniversary. Jade is tough enough that early toolmakers shaped axes from it, art is made slowly by hand, and both are things you keep for the rest of your lives.
Why jade and art
Tough stone, patient work
Jade is the name for two different minerals, jadeite and nephrite. Neither is especially hard for a gem, but both are extremely tough, which is why Neolithic people made knives and axe heads from nephrite.
Art fits the year for a similar reason. A painting, print or carving made by hand took somebody time and attention, which is exactly what twenty-six years of marriage has taken too.
Where it began
A married couple, painted in 1434
In 1434 the painter Jan van Eyck finished a portrait of a man and his wife standing side by side, now known as the Arnolfini Portrait and hung in London’s National Gallery. The couple are probably Giovanni di Nicolao di Arnolfini and his wife.
The details reward a long look: a small brown dog at their feet, a round mirror reflecting the room, a chandelier holding one lit candle and one snuffed out, and on the wall, in Latin, ‘Jan van Eyck was here. 1434’. For years it was read as a picture of a wedding ceremony. The gallery says that idea has since been dropped, but it remains a portrait of husband and wife.
Around the world
Jade weddings and oak weddings
Jade isn’t only an American idea for this year. Germans call the twenty-sixth the Jadehochzeit, or the Eichenhochzeit, the oak wedding, and the French call it the noces de jade.
Jade’s history runs deepest in China, where the written character for jade is one of the oldest in the language, dating to about 2950 BC, and a pierced jade disc is a symbol of the sky. Dutch, Italian and Japanese lists, meanwhile, skip the twenty-sixth altogether.
26th anniversary symbols
Jade, art and oak leaves
Jade and art
Hallmark’s guide to the twenty-sixth gives jade as the traditional gift and artwork as the modern one, and its year-by-year list simply says art. The Knot calls art the only modern symbol for the year, whether that means a photograph, a painting or a sculpture.
Jade, in any colour
There’s no recognised gemstone for the twenty-sixth, so jade, the traditional gift, is the natural stand-in. It comes in green, white, orange, yellow, lavender and black, and for both jadeite and nephrite, green is the most valued.
No set flower, so think oak
There’s no recognised flower for the twenty-sixth either. Take a cue from the German oak wedding instead: in Victorian flower language oak stood for strength, and a sprig of oak leaves tucked into a card says so without a word.
Celebrating the 26th
Make a little time for the two of you
Take the train to the coast for fish and chips, book the restaurant where you had your engagement dinner, or dig out the wedding album and see who can still name every guest. Twenty-six years gives you plenty to remember, and a good reason to make time for each other.
Art is the theme, so plan a gallery day with a rule: each of you picks one picture, then explains the choice over coffee afterwards. Even after twenty-six years, you’ll learn something about each other.
Finish with a letter, however short. Your own handwriting is a kind of art too.
More romantic anniversary ideasWhat the 26th means to others
Letters that capture twenty-six years
Twenty-six years in, you’ve said ‘I love you’ thousands of times, often while looking for the car keys. A letter gives it a bit more room. Here are three to borrow from, and three real stories about year twenty-six and its art and jade traditions.
Letters to inspire your own
We wrote these as examples. Borrow any line you like.
Dear Helen,
The gift for twenty-six years is art, and I’ve been thinking about our fridge door. First it was finger paintings, then school certificates, then the save-the-date for Emma’s wedding. Now it’s mostly the grandkids’ drawings. Twenty-six years of fridge door, and you were behind nearly all of it.
This year you organised a wedding, a fiftieth and a house move inside six months, and I only lost the trailer keys once.
I still have the sketch you drew of me on our honeymoon in Hobart, the one where my nose takes up half the page. It’s still my favourite picture of me.
Happy anniversary. Here’s to the next twenty-six, and a bigger fridge.
All my love,
Steve
Dear Raj,
Twenty-six years ago you arrived at our wedding with your grandmother’s jade pendant in your pocket, and fastened it on me in the car park because you’d forgotten to give it to me earlier.
I’ve worn it every anniversary since. It has outlasted three houses, two dogs and your moustache phase, thank goodness.
This year you took up watercolour at the community centre, and our hallway is now a gallery of slightly wonky gum trees. I love every one of them, and I love that you still try new things.
Happy anniversary. Paint me something for our twenty-seventh.
Love,
Meena
To us,
We married in the shearing shed on your uncle’s farm outside Mudgee, because the hall in town was booked for the B&S ball. The dog ate half the pavlova and nobody minded.
Twenty-six years, two droughts, one flood and four kids later, we still argue about who said ‘I love you’ first. (It was you.) (It was not.)
We’ve decided to say our vows again next spring: same shed, smaller crowd, better catering. The kids can give the speeches this time. Heaven help us.
Here’s to us, and to a dog-proof dessert table.
Love,
Bec and Andy
Worth reading
Real stories and finds about the twenty-six-year mark. Links open in a new tab.
For their twenty-fifth anniversary, writer J. F. Riordan commissioned a portrait of her husband from a local artist she had known since the artist was a teenager. Good paintings take time, so it was finished just before their twenty-sixth, and the artist came to the house to unveil it with the whole family there. It continues a family tradition of portraits that goes back several generations.
Frida Kahlo painted this double portrait of herself and her husband, Diego Rivera, in San Francisco in April 1931, for their friend Albert Bender. Rivera holds a palette and brushes, Kahlo wears a green dress and a red shawl, and they hold hands. A bird at the top carries a ribbon with a dedication that begins ‘Here you see us’.
In Māori tradition, treasured objects of pounamu, New Zealand’s jade, were exchanged to seal peace between tribes. Te Ara explains the tatau pounamu, a ‘greenstone door’ between former enemies, and tells how one peace between Ngāti Kahungunu and Ngāi Tūhoe was sealed by symbolically marrying two hills. A thoughtful read for anyone giving jade as a sign of a promise kept.
26th anniversary FAQ
