A milestone worth celebrating
31st Anniversary Gifts
Hallmark’s theme for the thirty-first anniversary is travel, with timepieces as the modern alternative.
Celebrate the love behind the milestone with a real rose preserved in 24K gold, a lasting keepsake of thirty-one years together.
The meaning behind your year
Gift ideas
Travel, Timepieces and Sheepskin: Six Anniversary Gift Ideas
A few traditional, a few practical, and all of them better with a note attached.
Two days on The Ghan
The Ghan runs between Adelaide and Darwin by way of Alice Springs, 2,979 kilometres in a little over two days, with stops for tours along the way. It leaves at least once a week, so you can time it for the anniversary.
One of the dream trips
Hallmark’s splurge for the 31st is the dream holiday, ‘well, one of them, anyway’. Pick the one whose brochure has been on the fridge longest, book it for the coming year, and put the itinerary in the card.
A map with pins in it
Frame a big map and mark every place you’ve been together with a pin, from the honeymoon to last Easter’s caravan park. Leave a little dish of spare pins beside it for the trips still to come.
A watch with the date on the back
The Knot’s modern gift for the 31st is a timepiece. Have a new watch engraved with your wedding date, or take the one they’ve worn for decades to a watchmaker for a proper service and a new strap.
A clock you wind on your anniversary
An anniversary clock needs winding only about once a year. Make your anniversary the day you wind it, together, and you’ve started a small ritual for every year after.
Two pairs of ugg boots
Sheepskin is the French theme for the 31st, and in Australia that can only mean good ugg boots: sheepskin with the fleece left on the inside. Pack them for the cold mornings on your next trip.
The 24K gold-dipped rose
A gold rose to celebrate thirty-one 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 thirty-one 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 31st means
Why travel
for thirty-one years?
Travel is Hallmark’s theme for a thirty-first wedding anniversary, and a timepiece is the modern gift. Thirty-one years in, many couples finally have the time, and the quiet house, to go somewhere together without checking on anyone.
Why travel
Thirty-one years, and time to go
Travel arrives at a good moment. For many couples the children have left home, work is winding down, and the trips postponed for school holidays and mortgage payments are suddenly possible.
Hallmark’s cheapest suggestion is one of its best: spend a day as tourists in your own town, at the places you’ve never actually been. Every city has a lookout, gallery or ferry ride the locals never quite get around to.
Where it began
The 400-day clock
The old anniversary lists have nothing for the 31st, and The Knot gives it only a modern gift: a timepiece. The best-known anniversary timepiece is the torsion pendulum clock, called a 400-day or anniversary clock because many run for a year or more on one winding.
An American, Aaron Crane, patented the first torsion pendulum clock in 1841. The German Anton Harder patented his own design in 1879 and 1880, and once his patent ran out, German firms began making the clocks in large numbers, each under a glass dome to keep out the draughts.
Around the world
Linden trees and sheepskin
German lists call the 31st the Lindenhochzeit, the linden wedding, or the Basanehochzeit. Basane is tanned sheepskin, once used to bind books, and the French call the 31st the noces de basane, though even a German wedding magazine admits nobody knows why.
The linden, or lime tree (no relation to the fruit), has heart-shaped leaves and sweetly scented flowers, and its timber is prized as fine and stable. Spanish lists give ebony for the 31st, while Dutch, Italian and Japanese lists skip the year.
31st anniversary symbols
Travel, timepieces and linden
Travel and timepieces
Hallmark’s theme is travel and The Knot’s modern gift is a timepiece, so a good watch for the trip covers both. A small travel alarm clock does the same job on a hotel bedside table.
Bring one home
No anniversary stone is set for the 31st. If you’d like one, buy it on your travels, close to where it was mined or cut, and the story of the trip comes with it.
Linden blossom
No flower is set for the 31st either. Kate Greenaway’s 1884 Language of Flowers gives lime or linden trees the meaning ‘conjugal love’, and the American linden ‘matrimony’, which makes linden blossom a quietly fitting choice.
Celebrating the 31st
Make a little time for the two of you
Book a night in the town where you honeymooned, drive a stretch of coast you haven’t seen since the kids were small, or spread the old photo albums across the table and choose next year’s trip. Thirty-one years gives you plenty to remember, and a good reason to make time for each other.
With travel as the theme, cook dinner from somewhere you want to go, or somewhere you’ve been: the paella from that wet week in Spain, the laksa from the Darwin markets. Hide the next booking, or just a printed map, under their plate.
Or send a postcard from home. Write it, stamp it and post it to your own address, and it will turn up a day or two later like a small surprise.
More romantic anniversary ideasWhat the 31st means to others
Letters that capture thirty-one years
Thirty-one years in, there’s a fair chance you’re planning a trip, or at least arguing about one. Before you book anything, write down what the last thirty-one years have meant to you, because it fits on one page and it travels well. Here are three to borrow from, and three real stories about year thirty-one.
Letters to inspire your own
We wrote these as examples. Borrow any line you like.
Dear Phil,
Thirty-one years, and you still can’t read a map. I say that with love, and as the woman who spent her honeymoon in the wrong half of Tasmania.
This was the year you retired, cleaned out the garage, sold the boat you never used and bought a caravan you’ve used every weekend since. Our granddaughter now thinks Grandpa lives in it.
I worried that retirement would make you restless. Instead you’ve been the best company I’ve had in years.
Happy anniversary. I’ve put the map on your side of the van. Please hold it the right way up.
All my love,
Carol
Dear Anne,
For thirty-one years you’ve organised every holiday we’ve had, down to the snacks for the car and the spare pair of thongs. This year it’s my turn.
You’ll get the details on Friday. All I’ll say now is pack something warm, something nice for dinner and your good walking shoes, and don’t bother asking the kids, because I haven’t told them either.
You looked after your mum this year with more patience than I’ve ever had for anything. You deserve a week where nobody needs you but me, and I promise to be low maintenance.
Happy anniversary, love. Bring your reading glasses. I’ve booked us a window seat.
Love,
Graham
Dear Bron,
I’m writing this outside the van while you sleep, with a cup of tea and a very bold galah watching me. Thirty-one years ago today we were dancing badly at the Bunbury bowling club while your uncle explained the offside rule to the celebrant.
Since then: three kids, four houses, one dog who ate an entire Christmas ham, and now this. The two of us, a van, and a long stretch of coast with nowhere we need to be.
Yesterday you said this was the best holiday we’ve ever had. I think it’s because it’s the first one where we didn’t have to bring anybody home.
Happy anniversary. Breakfast is on, and the galah wants his share.
Yours,
Steve
Worth reading
Real stories and finds about the thirty-one-year mark. Links open in a new tab.
Nivaun Rahne and Deborah Rigg met in 1993, when she walked into the bike shop where he worked; he fixed her bike and left a note on the handlebars. They sold their house in Washington state in 2015, spent about a year cycling around Australia, then rode into Dunedin with plans to mark their 31st anniversary at Larnach Castle. As Nivaun puts it, they’ve ‘been riding together’ ever since.
Jess and Tom have lived on the road since 2012, with no house, car or storage unit, and on their 31st anniversary Jess looks back on what that life has given them: champagne in a small boat among Antarctic icebergs, Tasmanian sunsets, and a health scare in 2019 they came through together. The post ends with the chicken, sausage and mushroom casserole they cook to celebrate.
One of the oldest stories about a long marriage. An elderly couple in Phrygia are the only people in their district to take in two travellers, who turn out to be Jupiter and Mercury in disguise. Offered a reward, Philemon asks that the two of them die in the same hour, so neither has to see the other’s grave, and the gods turn them into an oak and a linden standing side by side.
31st anniversary FAQ
