A milestone worth celebrating
13th Anniversary Gifts
Lace is the traditional thirteenth anniversary gift, with textiles as the modern alternative.
Celebrate the love behind the milestone with a real rose preserved in 24K gold, a lasting keepsake of thirteen years together.
The meaning behind your year
Gift ideas
Lace, Textiles and Citrine: Six Anniversary Gift Ideas
A few traditional, a few practical, and all of them better with a note attached.
A piece of old lace, framed
Look through a parent’s linen cupboard, or an op shop, for a lace collar, a handkerchief or the corner of a tablecloth. Have it mounted in a deep box frame, with your wedding date written on the back.
Lace up your boots
Hallmark’s pun, not ours: pack a picnic and walk to a lookout you’ve both been meaning to try. Hide a card in the backpack for them to open at the top.
A tin of lace biscuits
Hallmark suggests baking a batch of oatmeal lace cookies. Make them together on a quiet Sunday, keep half, and give the rest to the friends who stood beside you at the wedding.
A throw for the cold months
Textiles are the modern 13th anniversary gift, and Hallmark’s pick is a soft faux fur blanket. A wool throw in a colour that suits your lounge room will see plenty of winter nights and Sunday naps.
Citrine, in a warm yellow
Citrine is the 13th anniversary stone, and GIA says the finest are a strong yellow to reddish orange, with no brown. It costs less than topaz or yellow sapphire, and it is a birthstone for November.
A lucky thirteen game night
Hallmark suggests putting the unlucky number to the test with a game night. Play thirteen rounds of whatever you both play best, and agree in advance that the loser does the dishes for a week.
The 24K gold-dipped rose
A gold rose to celebrate thirteen 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 thirteen 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 13th means
Why lace
for thirteen years?
Lace is the traditional gift for a thirteenth wedding anniversary. It is mostly open space held together by thread, and every crossing depends on the ones around it, which is a fair description of a marriage thirteen years in.
Why lace
Made one crossing at a time
Lace is an openwork fabric: a pattern of holes, held in place by thread. Bobbin lace is worked with bobbins on a stiff pillow, and needle lace is built up stitch by stitch with a needle and thread. Neither can be hurried.
The word goes back through the Old French las, a string or noose, to the Latin laqueus, a noose. So a gift of lace at thirteen years is, quite literally, a nod to the knot you tied.
Where it began
The queen who chose lace
In 1840 Queen Victoria was married in Honiton lace, and the fashion she started for lace on wedding dresses has never really gone away. If your mother or grandmother wore lace on her wedding day, she was following the queen.
Lace itself is older. The earliest surviving pieces come from sixteenth-century Italy, though Flemish lacemakers have their own claim, and nobody can say for certain where it began.
Around the world
Lace and lily of the valley
Lace marks the thirteenth well beyond English-speaking lists. Germany has the Spitzenhochzeit, the lace wedding, Spain the bodas de encaje, and the Dutch list starts with kant, lace. In Japan the thirteenth is the lace wedding too.
France chooses a flower instead: the thirteenth is the noces de muguet, the lily of the valley wedding, and lily of the valley is also the flower sold all over France on 1 May. German and Dutch lists include it as well, alongside violets in Germany and vermilion in the Netherlands, and it was in the bridal bouquet when Prince William married Catherine Middleton.
13th anniversary symbols
Lace, citrine and chrysanthemums
Lace and textiles
Lace is the 13th anniversary gift on Debrett’s British list and on the American lists, and New Zealand’s encyclopedia, Te Ara, gives it too. Hallmark names textiles as the modern alternative.
Citrine
Citrine is a yellow quartz that has been worn since the time of the pharaohs. Natural citrine is rare, so GIA warns that most of what is sold began as amethyst and was heated to change its colour.
Chrysanthemum
The name comes from the Greek for golden flower. In Victorian flower language a red chrysanthemum said ‘I love you’ and a white one stood for truth, but skip the yellow, which meant slighted love. In Australia they are often given on Mother’s Day.
Celebrating the 13th
Make a little time for the two of you
Cook the dinner you made the night you got engaged, take the long way home past your first rental, or send the kids to their grandparents and sleep in. Thirteen years gives you plenty to remember, and a good reason to make time for each other.
A baker’s dozen is thirteen, from an old habit of bakers handing shopkeepers thirteen loaves for the price of twelve. Pick up thirteen of their favourite things from the bakery on the morning of your anniversary, and see how many survive until lunch.
The card doesn’t need to be long. Thirteen words, one for every year, can say more than a page.
More romantic anniversary ideasWhat the 13th means to others
Letters that capture thirteen years
Thirteen years in, most of what you love about each other goes unsaid, because there’s always a lunchbox to pack or a car to move. A letter puts it into words in one sitting, and it will still be there when the flowers are long gone. Here are three to borrow from, and three real stories about year thirteen.
Letters to inspire your own
We wrote these as examples. Borrow any line you like.
Dear Luke,
Last week you asked what the thirteenth anniversary is, and when I said lace, you said, ‘Like shoelaces?’ Thirteen years, and you can still make me laugh when I’m trying to be serious.
This year you coached Ollie’s under-11s through a whole season without a win and somehow made every one of them feel like a premiership player. You drove Mum to her appointments every Thursday and never once let her pay for parking.
When we married, I thought I knew you. I had no idea you could be this patient, or that you’d still hold my hand in the supermarket queue.
Happy anniversary. Shoelaces are in the post.
All my love,
Kate
Dear Mei,
It rained sideways in Fremantle on our wedding day, and you told everyone the photos would be ‘moody’. They are. You were right, as you usually are, though I’d appreciate it if you didn’t frame this letter.
This year you finished your nursing degree at forty, with two kids, a part-time job and a husband who can never find the scissors. I watched you study at the kitchen table after late shifts, and I have never been prouder of anyone.
Thirteen years ago I promised to look after you. Most days it’s been the other way round.
Happy anniversary. I found the scissors. They were in the drawer you said they’d be in.
Love,
Daniel
Dear Sam,
Our anniversary lands on a Friday this year, and it’s our thirteenth. Your nan would have had us stay home with the curtains shut.
Let’s look at the record. The cat is black, the ladder has lived across the back path since the gutters, and I broke a mirror carrying boxes into this house. In thirteen years, our worst luck was the caravan park in Robe with the generator next door.
I don’t believe in luck, but I do believe in you: in the way you sing to the radio, the way you remember my coffee order and the way you still call me ‘the bride’ when you think nobody can hear.
Happy anniversary. I’d marry you again, on any date you like.
Yours, always,
Bec
Worth reading
Real stories and finds about the thirteen-year mark. Links open in a new tab.
Anne Bogel, the blogger behind Modern Mrs Darcy, wrote this list on her thirteenth wedding anniversary. She would rather renew her car registration with her husband than go on a picnic with anyone else, and she counts small daily things, like a good-morning kiss, above the big occasions. Her last tip is a good one: take everyone’s marriage advice, hers included, with a grain of salt.
Columnist Jessie Veeder wrote this open letter to her husband for their thirteenth anniversary, after showing their daughters the album from a wedding held in a cow pasture under a 100-year-old oak. At 23 she chose the words ‘Love is enough’ for that album. Thirteen years later she disagrees, and explains what she thinks love has to grow into. (A couple of mild swear words.)
Janet Scrimgeour wore this Limerick lace veil, made in Ireland, at her wedding in Bendigo in 1865. For more than 130 years it was handed down one female line, and each keeper lent it to every young woman in the family who married. The last keeper, Nancy Maslen, was the hundredth bride to wear it, and she gave it to the museum in 2003.
13th anniversary FAQ
