A milestone worth celebrating
55th Anniversary Gifts
Emerald is both the traditional and the modern gift. Emerald green is the traditional fifty-fifth anniversary colour.
A genuine dark green rose, finished with a lustrous glaze and 24 karat gold, is a lasting way to mark your first fifty-five years together.
The meaning behind your year
Gift ideas
Emerald, Green and Platinum: Six Anniversary Gift Ideas
A few traditional, a few practical, and all of them better with a note attached.
An emerald that gets worn
Emerald rates 7.5 to 8 for hardness, so it scratches more easily than diamond. Earrings or a pendant take fewer knocks than a ring, which means they can be worn every day rather than saved for best.
A lab-created emerald
Hallmark points out that lab-created emeralds often have the sparkle of the real thing for a smaller price. Ask the jeweller to show you one beside a natural stone, and choose with your eyes.
Puffing Billy to Emerald
Puffing Billy, the narrow-gauge steam railway that opened in 1900, runs between Belgrave and Gembrook through the town of Emerald, with a stop at Lakeside beside Emerald Lake Park. The open carriages let you sit on the edge with your legs dangling, if your knees agree.
A trip to the Emerald Isle
Hallmark’s big idea for a fifty-fifth is Ireland, the Emerald Isle. If the long flights are too much these days, find the nearest Irish pub with a music night and make an evening of it instead.
An emerald basket from the grandchildren
For family planning a present, Hallmark suggests an ‘emerald’ basket of gifts in shades of green. Let each grandchild add one thing: lime marmalade, a pot of mint, green socks, a jar of pickles.
Platinum, the German way
Germany calls the fifty-fifth the platinum wedding, so a platinum band, or a platinum setting for an emerald, honours both traditions at once. It’s also a good excuse to have your wedding rings cleaned and checked.
The dark green glazed rose
A dark green rose to celebrate fifty-five years together
A genuine dark green rose with a lustrous glazed finish, its petals and leaves edged in 24 karat gold and its stem plated in matching gold. Each rose retains its individual shape and character, so no two are exactly alike—a lasting reminder of your first fifty-five 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 30 cm long; display case 34 cm long
What the 55th means
Why emerald
for fifty-five years?
Emerald is both the traditional and the modern gift for a fifty-fifth wedding anniversary. It’s loved for its deep green rather than for being flawless, and after fifty-five years most couples would choose character over perfection too.
Why emerald
Green, and a little imperfect
Emerald is the green to bluish green variety of beryl, the same mineral family as aquamarine. Colombia has produced the finest emeralds for more than 500 years, and Cleopatra was known for her passion for them.
Few emeralds are free of flaws. Oils, waxes and resins are often used to fill small fractures that reach the surface, and an honest jeweller will tell you how much. As with a long marriage, you’re paying for the colour and the life in it, not for a lack of marks.
Where it began
A year the old lists never reached
Nineteenth-century lists had nothing between the golden and diamond weddings. In 1880 Sydney’s Australian Town and Country Journal went from golden at fifty to diamond at seventy-five, and in 1937 Brisbane’s Telegraph went from fifty straight to sixty.
Emerald now belongs to the fifty-fifth on Emily Post’s classic list and on Debrett’s British list, while GIA’s anniversary gem list gives alexandrite. Emerald turns up earlier too: GIA names it the gem for the 20th and 35th anniversaries, so a long marriage can collect three.
Around the world
Platinum, orchids and white gold
In Germany the fifty-fifth is the Platinhochzeit, the platinum wedding, or the Juwelenhochzeit, the jewel wedding. Dutch lists offer orchid, emerald or white gold, and the French call it the noces d’orchidée, the orchid wedding.
Spain stays with the bodas de esmeralda, and Japan’s list calls it the emerald wedding too. Italy’s list leaves the fifty-fifth out.
55th anniversary symbols
Emerald, alexandrite and orchids
Emerald
Emerald is the 55th anniversary gift on the classic and modern American lists and on Debrett’s British list, so for once everyone agrees. Emerald green is the colour for the year as well, which makes planning easy.
Alexandrite
GIA lists alexandrite as the 55th anniversary gemstone and calls it ‘emerald by day, ruby by night’. This rare colour-change gem looks bluish green in daylight and turns a brownish or purplish red under warm incandescent light.
Orchid
French and Dutch lists give the orchid for the fifty-fifth. Australia has a famous one of its own: the Cooktown orchid, usually lilac-purple, which grows wild in tropical north Queensland and was proclaimed the state’s floral emblem in 1959.
Celebrating the 55th
Make a little time for the two of you
Take the grandchildren to the place you honeymooned and tell them the version you’re allowed to; host a morning tea for the friends who were at the wedding; or go out to dinner on your own, phones off, and order dessert first. Fifty-five years gives you plenty to remember, and a good reason to make time for each other.
Make the day green. A green tablecloth, a lime cake and everyone in something emerald for the family photo gives the party a theme that even the youngest can join in.
Afterwards, find a quiet minute for the two of you. A short note in your own hand is the part that gets kept.
More romantic anniversary ideasWhat the 55th means to others
Letters that capture fifty-five years
After fifty-five years, you’ve heard each other’s stories more than once and still laugh in the same places. Writing down why is worth the effort. Here are three to borrow from, and three real stories about emeralds, alexandrite and the fifty-five-year mark.
Letters to inspire your own
We wrote these as examples. Borrow any line you like.
Dear Bruce,
We married in 1971 in a church hall in Toowoomba, with sandwiches, a keg and your uncle’s band, who knew four songs and played them all twice. I have never had a better night.
Fifty-five years later you still sing in the car, still can’t find the Vegemite in the cupboard it has lived in since 1983, and still bring me a cup of tea before you’ve made your own.
You were a good husband at twenty-four and you’re a great one at seventy-nine. Retirement suits you, mostly because you’ve taken up fishing and leave me in peace on Tuesdays.
Happy anniversary, love. Four songs, twice each, in the lounge room tonight.
All my love,
Dot
Dear Judy,
Fifty-five years ago I promised your mother I’d have you home by eleven. I had you home by eleven every night for a year, then married you so I wouldn’t have to.
Since then you’ve raised four children, three dogs and one very ungrateful cockatoo, learned the computer before I did, and become the person the whole street rings when something goes wrong.
When I had the bypass, you kept a notebook of everything the doctors said and asked the questions I was too scared to. I think about that more than you know.
Happy anniversary. I’m still yours, and I’m still not home by eleven.
Love always,
Frank
Dear Mia, Jack, Ollie and Grace,
Fifty-five years ago today, Pop wore flared trousers and Nan wore a veil she made herself from a lace curtain. Ask to see the photos. Then try not to laugh.
Here’s what we’ve learned, for whenever you need it. Marry someone who makes you laugh when the car breaks down. Say sorry first, and quickly. Put a little money aside for a holiday, even when it seems silly.
And when you’re very old, like us, hold hands in the supermarket. It embarrasses the young ones, which is half the fun.
Love,
Nan and Pop
Worth reading
Real stories and finds about the fifty-five-year mark. Links open in a new tab.
Terry Kirwin met Pat at a nightclub in Kirkstall, Leeds, in 1970, promised to ring her, and promptly lost her number. So he kept going back to the same nightclub until he found her again. They married at St Peter’s Church in Belle Isle in 1971, and for their 55th they shared three rules: pick the right person, commit to each other, and stay honest, with plenty of laughs along the way.
One of the world’s great emeralds began as a wedding present. In 1931 Clarence Mackay gave his bride, the Metropolitan Opera soprano Anna Case, a Cartier necklace set with a 167.97-carat emerald from Muzo in Colombia, 35 smaller emeralds and 2,191 diamonds. She gave it to the Smithsonian in 1984, and it now belongs to the National Museum of Natural History in Washington.
Alexandrite, GIA’s 55th anniversary gem, was found in Russia’s Ural Mountains in 1830 and named after the young Alexander II, then heir to the throne. Its red and green matched the military colours of imperial Russia, which caught the whole country’s attention. The Ural deposits didn’t last, and most alexandrite now comes from Sri Lanka, East Africa and Brazil.
55th anniversary FAQ
