A milestone worth celebrating
1st Anniversary Gifts
Paper is the traditional gift and clocks the modern theme. Gold is the traditional first anniversary colour.
Celebrate the love behind the milestone with a real rose preserved in 24K gold, a lasting keepsake of your first year together.
The meaning behind your year
Gift ideas
Paper, Clocks and Gold: Six Anniversary Gift Ideas
A few traditional, a few practical, and all of them better with a note attached.
Twelve notes for the year ahead
Write twelve short notes, seal each in an envelope marked with a month, and hand over the bundle tied with string. One small surprise a month is easier to keep up than one grand gesture a year.
Your vows, framed
Print your vows, or the reading from your ceremony, on heavy cotton paper and frame them for the hallway. If either of you ad-libbed on the day, put that bit in too.
Tickets for something in year two
Book a show, a match or a concert a few months away and give the tickets in a card. It’s a paper gift with a date night attached, and you both get something to look forward to.
Cotton, for the old-fashioned version
If you like the older lists, go with cotton: good sheets, a quilt for winter or a pair of matching robes. It will be used every single day of year two.
A clock with some history
Clocks are the modern first anniversary theme. Look for a vintage mantel or wall clock at an antique fair or auction, have it serviced, and ask the clockmaker to engrave your wedding date inside the case.
Gold, or a stone the colour of it
GIA treats gold itself as the first anniversary gift, and suggests citrine for anyone who’d like a gem in a golden colour. Plain gold studs or a fine chain will be worn for years.
The 24K gold-dipped rose
A gold rose to celebrate one year 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 year 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 1st means
Why paper
for the first year?
Paper is the traditional gift for a first wedding anniversary. It’s light, cheap and easy to tear, yet it’s where people write down the things worth keeping, which suits a marriage that’s only twelve months old.
Why paper
A blank page, and a clock to go with it
Japan’s anniversary list spells out the thinking behind the early years: they’re named after cheap, soft, everyday materials, and the names grow harder and more valuable as the marriage gets older. Paper sits right at the start.
That makes it a forgiving gift. A year in, nobody expects silver or diamonds; they expect you to have been paying attention, and paper is where that shows. Clocks, the modern theme, are about time itself: the year you’ve already shared, and all the years still to come.
Where it began
Cotton came first
For a long time the first anniversary was the cotton wedding. A Michigan newspaper listed it that way in 1876, a 1910 American etiquette guide still put cotton at one year and paper at two, and Brisbane’s Telegraph gave the same order in 1937.
Emily Post’s Etiquette of 1922 put paper at one year, and American lists have kept it there: Emily Post’s and Hallmark’s lists both start with paper today. Britain’s Pears Cyclopaedia allowed cotton or paper, and Debrett’s now gives paper.
Around the world
Paper, cotton and a wedding video
In Germany the first anniversary is usually the Papierhochzeit, the paper wedding, though some lists call it the cotton wedding instead. Many German couples save their wedding video and watch it together for the first time on the day.
France keeps the older tradition with the noces de coton, the cotton wedding, and Dutch lists offer cotton or paper. Japan calls it the paper wedding, and Spanish lists give paper too.
1st anniversary symbols
Paper, gold and carnations
Paper, cotton and clocks
Paper is the first anniversary gift on American lists and on Debrett’s British list. Older lists, Australian ones among them, called the first year the cotton wedding, and the modern theme is clocks.
Gold
According to GIA, gold has been used for decorative objects since about 4000 BC. Yellow gold is the best known, and white gold is made by adding metals such as nickel, palladium or platinum.
Carnation
Carnations are the traditional first anniversary flower, and their botanical name, Dianthus, comes from the Greek for ‘divine flower’. In Victorian flower language a pink carnation said ‘I’ll never forget you’, but skip yellow: it meant disdain.
Celebrating the 1st
Make a little time for the two of you
Go back to where you had your first meal as a married couple, take a day off together and do nothing much, or retrace the route of your wedding day, from where you got ready to where you danced. One year gives you plenty to remember, and a good reason to make time for each other.
If you like a theme, go gold for the evening: something sparkling in the fridge, yellow flowers on the table, and a playlist of every song from your reception.
Nothing about it has to be elaborate. Breakfast in bed and a card that says what you’ve noticed about them this year will do the job nicely.
More romantic anniversary ideasWhat the 1st means to others
Letters that capture your first year
One year in, the wedding has become a story you tell at dinner, and married life has become Tuesday nights and a shared shopping list. A letter is a good way to say what the first year was really like. Here are three to borrow from, and three real stories about the first year.
Letters to inspire your own
We wrote these as examples. Borrow any line you like.
Dear Josh,
A year ago you cried all the way through the vows, then denied it in your speech. The video doesn’t lie, and neither does your mum.
This year we moved twice, learned that the oven in the new place runs hot, and discovered that you can’t sleep unless the bedroom door is open exactly a hand’s width. I’ve stopped closing it.
I thought marriage might feel different. Mostly it feels like being on the same team as someone who always saves me the corner piece of the lasagne.
Here’s to year two. Your present is on paper, as tradition demands: a voucher for one whole Saturday with no plans.
All my love,
Ellie
Dear Mia,
Twelve months ago you walked down the aisle at Byron, sandy feet and all, and I forgot the first line of my vows. You mouthed it to me. I’ve been relying on you ever since.
You’ve taught me how to fold a fitted sheet, how to talk to your nonna on the phone without mixing up the cousins, and that a good night in beats most nights out.
Everyone says the first year is the hard one. If this was hard, I’ll happily take forty more.
Happy anniversary. The clock in the hallway is your present. It runs five minutes fast, so we might be on time for once.
Love,
Marco
Dear Luke,
Our first anniversary, and you’re somewhere off the coast near Darwin. Not quite what I pictured when we were booking the band.
So here’s the year on paper instead. You fixed the back gate the week before you left. You taught the dog to sit, which nobody thought possible. You rang every Sunday, even the night the line kept dropping out and we said ‘What?’ to each other for twenty minutes.
I’ve saved the bottle of champagne from the wedding. It’s in the fridge door, with a note telling everyone not to touch it.
Come home soon. We’ll have our anniversary dinner the night you walk in, and it will still count.
Yours, always,
Jess
Worth reading
Real stories and finds about the one-year mark. Links open in a new tab.
Grace married Will in June 2024 and wrote this just after their first anniversary. On their honeymoon, on the Greek island of Paros, Will asked her ‘What if you were a writer?’, and the post follows what happened next. Along the way she shares what the first year taught her about showing up for each other, asking good questions and forgiving quickly.
This American etiquette guide still put cotton at one year, and its party ideas are wonderfully over the top. Invitations were written on starched cotton handkerchiefs and delivered by hand, a ‘marriage bell’ of cotton wadding hung over the couple, and vanilla ice cream came in a pale green meringue shell to look like a cotton pod. Guests brought cotton gifts, right down to dish cloths in sets of twelve.
Emily Post’s famous etiquette book gave anniversaries one short section at the end of Chapter XXII, listing just eight of them, with paper at one year. Her advice is refreshingly relaxed: keep the guest list to close friends and family, since guests are expected to bring presents, and don’t take the early ones too seriously, because paper, wooden and tin presents are ‘seldom anything but jokes’.
1st anniversary FAQ
