A milestone worth celebrating
14th Anniversary Gifts
Ivory was the traditional fourteenth anniversary gift, with gold jewellery as the modern alternative.
Celebrate the love behind the milestone with a real rose preserved in 24K gold, a lasting keepsake of fourteen years together.
The meaning behind your year
Gift ideas
Gold, Opal and Agate: Six Anniversary Gift Ideas
A few traditional, a few practical, and all of them better with a note attached.
Know your carats
Hallmark’s picks are gold hoops, a bracelet or a signet ring with their initials. Gold is measured in parts out of 24: 18 carat is 75 per cent gold, and 9 carat, the minimum standard in Australia, is 37.5 per cent.
Pan for gold at Sovereign Hill
Sovereign Hill in Ballarat recreates an 1850s gold-rush town, and visitors can pan for real gold. Keep whatever flecks you find in a tiny bottle on the kitchen windowsill.
Opal, Australia’s own
Opal was declared Australia’s national gemstone on 27 July 1993, and Lightning Ridge in New South Wales is the main source of black opal. An Australian stone in a simple setting gives the gift a sense of place.
Vegetable ivory
For the look of ivory without the harm, choose tagua: the hard white seed of a South American palm, carved just like ivory into beads, buttons and jewellery. It is used today as a substitute for elephant ivory.
Two glasses with a gold rim
Hallmark suggests gold-rimmed champagne flutes as a gift for a couple. Buy a pair for yourselves, and bring them out for every small win this year as well as the big night.
The wedding photo nobody chose
Find the photo from your wedding day that didn’t make the album, the blurry one where you’re both laughing, and put it in a gold frame. Hallmark suggests a framed photo for friends, and it works just as well at home.
The 24K gold-dipped rose
A gold rose to celebrate fourteen 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 fourteen 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 14th means
Why gold
for fourteen years?
Gold jewellery is the modern gift for a fourteenth wedding anniversary, and it has taken the place of the old gift of ivory. Gold never rusts and can be worked into almost any shape, which suits a marriage that has had fourteen years to settle into its own.
Why gold
The metal that keeps its shine
Gold does not react with oxygen at any temperature, and most acids leave it alone too. That is why a gold ring can sit in a drawer for fifty years and come out shining.
It is also remarkably soft. A single gram can be beaten into a sheet a metre square, and gold leaf can be made so thin that light shows through it. Strong enough to last and soft enough to shape: fourteen years of marriage asks for a bit of both.
Where it began
Why ivory dropped off the list
The Victorian lists didn’t mention a fourteenth at all; they went from the twelfth straight to the fifteenth. Later British and American lists gave the year ivory, and New Zealand’s Te Ara offers ivory or agate.
In October 1989 the African elephant was given the highest protection under the CITES treaty, and international trade in ivory was banned from January 1990. Hallmark now leaves ivory off its list and gives gold jewellery instead.
Around the world
Ivory, agate and lead
Ivory is the fourteenth in Spain, the bodas de marfil, and in Japan, where the anniversary is the ivory wedding. The Dutch list gives ivory or lead, and German lists offer the Elfenbeinhochzeit (ivory), the Achathochzeit (agate), the Bleihochzeit (lead) and the Blaue Hochzeit, the blue wedding.
France keeps only the lead: the fourteenth there is the noces de plomb. Lead seems an odd thing to celebrate, though by fourteen years most couples know exactly how much weight the other can carry.
14th anniversary symbols
Gold, opal and dahlias
Ivory and gold jewellery
Ivory is the 14th gift on Debrett’s British list and the older American lists. Hallmark and most modern guides give gold jewellery instead, and that is the gift to give today.
Opal
Opal’s flashes of colour, called play-of-colour, come from tiny structures inside the stone that split light into colours. Opal also holds water, usually 6 to 10 per cent of its weight. It is a birthstone for October.
Dahlia
In Victorian flower language a single dahlia meant good taste. Mexico made the dahlia its national flower in 1963, and it grows in almost every colour except blue: a prize offered in 1846 for a blue dahlia was never claimed.
Celebrating the 14th
Make a little time for the two of you
Book a table at the place you went after your first proper argument, hire a little boat for the afternoon, or spend a morning in bed with the papers and a pot of coffee. Fourteen years gives you plenty to remember, and a good reason to make time for each other.
Hallmark suggests chasing the sun: head to a river, lake or beach and soak up the golden rays together. Go in the last hour before sunset, take something cold to drink, and stay until the light has gone.
Before you leave, tuck a short note in their jacket pocket. They’ll find it on some ordinary day, and that’s when it will count.
More romantic anniversary ideasWhat the 14th means to others
Letters that capture fourteen years
Fourteen years is long enough to have heard most of each other’s stories twice. A letter is the place to tell them something new: what you noticed this year, and what you’re hoping for next. Here are three to borrow from, and three real stories about year fourteen.
Letters to inspire your own
We wrote these as examples. Borrow any line you like.
Dear Tom,
Apparently the fourteenth used to be the ivory anniversary, but since neither of us wants to upset an elephant, it’s gold now. You asked if a gold credit card counts. It does not.
This year you taught Lily to drive in the empty school car park every Sunday, without raising your voice once, which is more than I managed. You also fixed the back gate, lost the dog, found the dog and fixed the back gate again.
Fourteen years ago I married a man who could turn a flat tyre into a party. You still can, and I still love watching you do it.
Happy anniversary. You’re worth your weight in gold, and I’ve seen how much toast you eat.
All my love,
Claire
Dear Amira,
I proposed with a ring from a market stall in Bangkok because it was all I could afford, and you wore it until it turned your finger green. You told everyone it was an antique.
Fourteen years, three kids and one kitchen renovation later, it’s still in your bedside drawer. I know, because I checked it last week to get your ring size.
Thank you for this year: for holding everything together while I changed jobs, for the Sunday pancakes, and for laughing at my jokes even when the kids have stopped.
Happy anniversary. This time, nothing will turn green.
Love,
Hamid
Dear Shell,
I’m writing this in my room in the Pilbara, with a fan that clicks every third turn and a view of the car park. It’s the third anniversary I’ve spent on swing, and the last, if the new roster comes through.
You’ve run the house, the kids, two school camps and a burst pipe on your own this month, and you still rang every night to ask about my day. I don’t know how you do it. I know I couldn’t.
When I fly home on Thursday, the kids will be at your mum’s, my phone will be in the drawer and the next four days are yours.
Fourteen years, and you still leave the porch light on.
Love always,
Gav
Worth reading
Real stories and finds about the fourteen-year mark. Links open in a new tab.
Made by the Melbourne jeweller W.H. Ede around 1855, this handmade ring has a natural gold nugget set between small floral emblems. It is the only known piece of his work, and it was found by a prospector downstream from Woolshed Falls, near Beechworth, where it had probably lain in the creek bed for about 170 years. The museum calls it a very early, very rare gold-rush miner’s ring.
Writing at the fourteen-year mark, Andrea Remke looks back at how much planning went into her wedding day and how little it taught her about being married. Her lessons come from the years since: staying through the hard stretches, forgiving each other, and looking after one another through illness, tiredness and small children. Honest and warm, with one mild ‘hell’.
GIA’s short history of the 14th anniversary stone explains why the ancient Romans saw opal as a symbol of love and hope, and how it later picked up a reputation for bad luck. GIA traces that superstition to Sir Walter Scott’s novel Anne of Geierstein, published in 1829, and to the leftover belief that opal is unlucky for anyone not born in October.
14th anniversary FAQ
