A milestone worth celebrating
27th Anniversary Gifts
Music is Hallmark’s twenty-seventh anniversary gift, with sculpture as the modern alternative.
Celebrate the love behind the milestone with a real rose preserved in 24K gold, a lasting keepsake of twenty-seven years together.
The meaning behind your year
Gift ideas
Music, Sculpture and Dance: Six Anniversary Gift Ideas
A few traditional, a few practical, and all of them better with a note attached.
Twenty-seven songs, one for each year
Hallmark’s first suggestion is a playlist of songs that make you think of them. Make it one song for every year of your marriage, and write a line beside each one explaining why it made the cut.
A dance class for two
Hallmark suggests a dance lesson together. Book a beginners’ ballroom or swing class and learn the steps you skipped at the wedding, when you mostly swayed and hoped for the best.
Front row, finally
Hallmark’s splurge is front-row tickets to their favourite band or musical. If that band hasn’t toured since the nineties, a good tribute act still counts.
Sculpture by the Sea
For about three weeks each spring, Sculpture by the Sea lines the coastal walk from Bondi to Tamarama with sculpture, and it’s free. Its sister show at Cottesloe Beach in Western Australia runs in March. Go early, before the crowds, and choose a favourite each.
A small sculpture you’ll both touch
Sculpture is the modern twenty-seventh anniversary gift. Look for a small piece by a local maker at an open studio or art prize show: a carved bird for the windowsill, a ceramic figure for the bookshelf, or a weathered steel piece for the garden.
Your song, on vinyl
Hallmark suggests a vinyl record of a song they loved growing up. Track down the record you danced to at your wedding, frame the sleeve, and keep the record itself for playing.
The 24K gold-dipped rose
A gold rose to celebrate twenty-seven 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 twenty-seven 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 27th means
Why music
for twenty-seven years?
Music is the gift for a twenty-seventh wedding anniversary on Hallmark’s list. After twenty-seven years most couples have a soundtrack of their own: the song from the wedding, the album worn thin on long drives, and the tune one of you can’t stop humming.
Why music
The tune you walked out to
Plenty of couples leave the church to Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, written in 1842 as part of his music for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The first wedding known to have used it was in Tiverton, England, in 1847, when Dorothy Carew married Tom Daniel.
It caught on after Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter chose it for her marriage to Prince Frederick William of Prussia in 1858. Brides usually walk in to something else, often Wagner’s Bridal Chorus, so a marriage can begin with two pieces of music before anyone has said ‘I do’.
Where it began
How an 1880 waltz became the Anniversary Song
In 1880 the composer Ion Ivanovici published a waltz in Bucharest called Waves of the Danube. Sixty-six years later, Al Jolson and Saul Chaplin gave it new words and a new name: The Anniversary Song.
It featured in the film The Jolson Story, and in early 1947 Jolson’s recording climbed to number two in the American charts, with versions by Dinah Shore, Guy Lombardo and Tex Beneke not far behind. Not bad for a tune that was already older than most of the people dancing to it.
Around the world
Jute, mahogany and jet
Other countries go their own way with the twenty-seventh. Germans call it the Jutehochzeit, the jute wedding, the French call it the noces d’acajou, the mahogany wedding, and Spanish lists give jet.
Dutch, Italian and Japanese lists don’t name the year at all, so borrow whichever idea appeals: a mahogany music box, a jute picnic rug, or simply the playlist.
27th anniversary symbols
Music, sculpture and myrtle
Music and sculpture
Hallmark gives music for the twenty-seventh and calls it both the traditional and the modern gift. The Knot says the year has no traditional gift at all, only a modern one, sculpture. The old lists skip the year, so take your pick.
No set stone, so choose a birthstone
There’s no recognised gemstone for the twenty-seventh. A birthstone makes a personal stand-in: GIA’s list runs from garnet in January to turquoise, tanzanite and zircon in December, and some months, like October with opal and tourmaline, give you a choice.
No set flower, so try myrtle
There’s no recognised flower for the twenty-seventh either. Myrtle is a good choice: in Victorian flower language it meant good luck and love in a marriage, and after twenty-seven years you can vouch for both.
Celebrating the 27th
Make a little time for the two of you
Find a pub with a live band and claim the table nearest the stage, drive the coast road with the windows down, or walk the beach where you spent your honeymoon. Twenty-seven years gives you plenty to remember, and a good reason to make time for each other.
Hallmark suggests karaoke, which may be the best idea on any anniversary list. Pick a song for each other, no vetoes allowed, and sing it like you mean it.
Then put something in writing. A short letter is easier to keep than a song, and you can read it again without anyone having to sing.
More romantic anniversary ideasWhat the 27th means to others
Letters that capture twenty-seven years
Twenty-seven years is long enough to have a shared soundtrack and a few running jokes nobody else understands. A letter is a good place to collect them. Here are three to borrow from, and three real stories about year twenty-seven and its traditions.
Letters to inspire your own
We wrote these as examples. Borrow any line you like.
Dear Lorraine,
Hallmark says the gift for twenty-seven years is music. Given my singing, I’ve decided the kindest present is that I won’t.
We danced to Crowded House at our wedding, badly, in the RSL hall in Geelong, and you trod on my foot so hard I limped through the photos. I’d do it all again tomorrow, limp included.
This year we became grandparents, and at three in the morning I heard you singing to Ava, the same lullaby you sang to our boys. Some things don’t change, thank goodness.
Happy anniversary. Save me a dance, and wear sensible shoes.
All my love,
Phil
Dear Gary,
You’ve been retired for six months, and the garage has never been tidier. I’ve also never been asked so many times where the colander lives.
Twenty-seven years ago you promised my dad you’d look after me. You’ve done that, but the part you never promised is the part I love most: you still make me laugh every day, usually by accident.
This year you built a pergola from a video, learned to make sourdough and drove four hundred kilometres because I missed my sister. You’re the best decision I ever made, and I once picked a scratchie that won fifty dollars.
Happy anniversary. The colander is in the bottom drawer, where it’s always been.
Love,
Deb
Dear Martin,
Twenty-seven years ago, our choir director put a quiet alto next to a tenor who always came in a beat late, and here we are.
You still come in a beat late, and I still nudge you. The kids think we’re ridiculous, and they’re not wrong.
This year, when I lost my voice for six weeks, you sang my part at home every night so I wouldn’t forget it. Badly. It was the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me.
Happy anniversary. See you at rehearsal.
Your alto,
Jenny
Worth reading
Real stories and finds about the twenty-seven-year mark. Links open in a new tab.
Tony Morgan marked twenty-seven years with Emily by listing what he’d learned, and she added her own notes. Loving something doesn’t mean your spouse will, he says: she loves grilled cheese and tomato soup, he loves football. Wallpapering their first house nearly did them in, so they now avoid home projects together, and he has made his peace with the fact that she doesn’t dust.
In 1969 the husband-and-wife artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped two and a half kilometres of coast at Little Bay in Sydney in fabric and rope. More than 100 workers and 11 volunteers spent four weeks on it, and at the time it was the largest single artwork ever made. A Sun-Herald reporter noticed that people arrived certain the artist was crazy, then stayed far longer than they meant to.
Spanish lists name jet for the twenty-seventh, and this small carving from Santiago de Compostela shows why the stone mattered in Spain. The V&A explains that jet is a particularly dense coal that can be carved and polished, and that for six hundred years jet pieces like this were linked with pilgrims who had reached the shrine of St James. It’s on display in the museum’s sculpture galleries.
27th anniversary FAQ
