A milestone worth celebrating
23rd Anniversary Gifts
Silver plate is both the traditional and the modern twenty-third anniversary gift.
Celebrate the love behind the milestone with a real rose preserved in pure silver, a lasting keepsake of twenty-three years together.
The meaning behind your year
Gift ideas
Silver Plate, Air and Imperial Topaz: Six Anniversary Gift Ideas
A few traditional, a few practical, and all of them better with a note attached.
An op-shop hunt for old silver plate
Give yourselves a budget and a Saturday at the op shops and antique markets. Look underneath for EPNS: it stands for electroplated nickel silver, real silver over an alloy that, despite its name, contains no silver at all.
A frame for this year, not the wedding
Put a recent photo of the two of you in a silver-plated frame: last winter’s bushwalk, a child’s graduation, the pair of you squinting at a barbecue. The wedding photos already get plenty of wall space.
Twenty-three at the table
Hallmark’s idea for the year is a private room at your favourite restaurant and twenty-three friends, one for every year. Hosting at home instead? Bring out the silver-plated serving spoons that only appear at Christmas.
Up at dawn in Canberra
Every March, about fifty hot-air balloons lift off at dawn from the forecourt of Old Parliament House for the Canberra Balloon Spectacular, which has run since 1987. Book a flight in one, or set an early alarm and watch them go up.
Something with wind in it
Fly a kite on a blustery beach, take the ferry and sit out the front, or book a scenic flight over the town where you married. Air may be the cheapest anniversary theme on any list, and the best excuse for a day outdoors.
Imperial topaz, once for royals only
Imperial topaz is the 23rd anniversary gemstone. GIA says the name comes from nineteenth-century Russia, where the pink stone was named to honour the tsar and only the royal family was allowed to own it. Topaz is also a November birthstone.
The silver-dipped rose
A silver rose to celebrate twenty-three years together
A genuine rose, chosen for its shape and finished in pure silver. Each rose retains its individual shape and character, so no two are exactly alike—a lasting reminder of your first twenty-three years together.
- Includes a certificate of authenticity
- Presented in a luxurious display case, inside a gloss white gift box bearing our debossed silver leaf logo
- A timeless symbol of love, preserved to keep forever
- Rose approximately 29 cm long; display case 34 cm long
What the 23rd means
Why silver plate
for twenty-three years?
Silver plate is the gift for a twenty-third wedding anniversary. It puts a thin skin of real silver over a tougher metal underneath, a fair picture of a marriage two years out from its silver wedding: polished on top, solid all the way through.
Why silver plate
Real silver, worn where it’s held
Silver plate is a layer of genuine silver bonded to a cheaper, stronger metal. In early Sheffield plate the silver was usually only about a fortieth as thick as the copper beneath it, yet it looked and polished like the real thing.
On old pieces the copper starts to show through on handles and rims, wherever hands touch most. Collectors call it ‘bleeding’, and it’s one of the surest signs that a piece is genuinely old. Twenty-three years of marriage leaves a few worn spots like that too, and every one of them was earned.
Where it began
A Sheffield cutler’s discovery
In the early 1740s, a Sheffield cutler named Thomas Boulsover found that silver and copper, heated together under pressure, fused into one sheet that could be rolled and shaped without the layers parting. He stamped it into buttons that looked like silver for a fraction of the price.
The popular story says he stumbled on it while mending a knife handle, though one historian of Sheffield plate calls that tale probably apocryphal. Either way, the trade flourished for about a hundred years, until electroplating replaced it in the 1840s.
Around the world
Beryl, water and a year most lists skip
French lists call the twenty-third the noces de béryl, after the mineral family that includes emerald and aquamarine. Spanish lists give water, which sits neatly beside Hallmark’s run of elements: fire at twenty-one, water at twenty-two and air at twenty-three.
Most countries don’t name the year at all. German, Dutch and Italian lists leave it out, and Japan, following the British pattern, names every anniversary up to the fifteenth and then only every fifth year.
23rd anniversary symbols
Silver plate, imperial topaz and honeysuckle
Silver plate and air
The old lists have no gift for the twenty-third. Hallmark’s own guide to the year gives silver plate as both the traditional and the modern gift, while its year-by-year list gives air as the theme, so either works.
Imperial topaz
Topaz is colourless in its natural state, and most blue topaz is heat-treated and irradiated to deepen its colour. Imperial topaz runs from yellow to pink-orange, and the 97.45-carat Blaze Imperial Topaz is in the collection of the Field Museum of Natural History.
No set flower, so try honeysuckle
There’s no recognised flower for the twenty-third. Honeysuckle makes a good stand-in: in Victorian flower language it meant ‘bonds of love’, which is a fair summary of twenty-three years together.
Celebrating the 23rd
Make a little time for the two of you
Take the long way to the coast with the old road-trip playlist, book a table somewhere the kids won’t find you, or spend an evening with the photos from the year you met. Twenty-three years gives you plenty to remember, and a good reason to make time for each other.
Air is the theme, so get outside and get some height. A picnic on the highest hill within an hour’s drive, a chairlift ride out of season or a walk along the cliffs all count, and the conversations you never get to at home tend to happen up there.
Before the day is out, write each other a note. It doesn’t need to be clever, just true, and it will end up in a drawer you both know about.
More romantic anniversary ideasWhat the 23rd means to others
Letters that capture twenty-three years
Twenty-three years in, most of what you say to each other is logistics: who’s collecting whom, and whether there’s any milk. A letter is a chance to say the other things. Here are three to borrow from, and three real stories about year twenty-three and its traditions.
Letters to inspire your own
We wrote these as examples. Borrow any line you like.
Dear Michelle,
Hallmark says the theme for twenty-three years is air. I mentioned it at dinner and Josh said that would explain my opinions, which I thought was uncalled for.
This was the year you went back to uni at forty-nine, studied at the kitchen table until midnight and topped the class anyway. It was also the year you taught Ella to drive, which I could not have done without a sedative.
I still remember you at twenty-six, in that op-shop dress, telling the celebrant to hurry up because the sausage rolls were getting cold. You were right then, and you’re right about most things now. Not the dishwasher.
Happy anniversary. Two more years and we’re silver.
All my love,
Greg
Dear Tony,
Twenty-three years ago you stood up at our reception in Wollongong and gave a speech so short that Dad thought the microphone had broken. You said you’d rather show people than tell them. You’ve kept that promise better than any vow.
This year you drove to Mum’s every Sunday to mow her lawn and fix whatever had fallen off, and never once mentioned it. You sat through a whole season of under-14 netball. You learned to make my nonna’s gnocchi, and only sulked a little when the first batch fell apart.
I know you’d rather I didn’t make a fuss, so I’ve put it in writing instead, where you can read it on your own.
Happy anniversary. I’d choose you again, short speeches and all.
Love,
Carla
To us,
We’re writing this on the back deck with the good wine glasses, which have survived twenty-three years, two moves and one very enthusiastic labrador, so there’s hope for anything.
Both girls have left home, the spare rooms are suddenly very quiet, and we’ve started talking to each other at dinner instead of refereeing. It turns out we still like each other. Quite a lot.
In two years we’ll reach our silver anniversary. Here’s the plan: a weekend somewhere with no wi-fi, and a promise to keep doing the boring things well, because they’ve been the best part all along.
See you at twenty-five. Bring the good glasses.
Yours, both of us,
Sue and Rob
Worth reading
Real stories and finds about the twenty-three-year mark. Links open in a new tab.
Christine Carter’s list is short and honest: talk about everything, expect to give more than you get in some years, and choose each other on purpose every morning. She remembers her husband proposing with a treasure hunt of notes that ended at a picnic in a park, and says the small love notes he still leaves on her desk mean even more now. She has kept every one.
One December evening in 1939, a Melbourne bride, Eunice Stewart, was married 1,500 feet above the city’s theatregoers, with the wedding party spread across three planes. The service took twenty minutes, and the register was signed over Werribee, where the couple planned to live. The minister, a retired clergyman on his very first flight, said afterwards that every word could be heard.
This urn of Sheffield plate kept water hot so that the hostess could keep topping up the teapot at the table. The V&A’s notes explain that tea urns arrived in the 1760s, and that a 1774 patent put a heated iron bar inside the urn so it no longer needed a burner underneath. It’s on display in the museum’s British Galleries.
23rd anniversary FAQ
