A milestone worth celebrating
32nd Anniversary Gifts
Hallmark’s theme for the thirty-second anniversary is bronze, with transport as the modern alternative.
Celebrate the love behind the milestone with a real rose preserved in 24K gold, a lasting keepsake of thirty-two years together.
The meaning behind your year
Gift ideas
Bronze, Copper and Transport: Six Anniversary Gift Ideas
A few traditional, a few practical, and all of them better with a note attached.
A wind chime for the verandah
Hallmark suggests a bronze wind chime, and it’s a lovely one to live with. Hang it near the spot where you sit in the evenings, and let the breeze have the last word.
A lamp for the reading chair
A bronze lamp is another Hallmark idea, and it’s a gift that gets used every night. Choose one for the corner where they read, or the desk where they do the crossword.
Your own words, cast in bronze
Hallmark’s gift for another couple is a bronze plaque with a romantic quote. Make yours personal: a line from your wedding song, or something one of you said on a hard day, fixed to the garden wall.
Copper for the cook
A heavy copper saucepan for the one who cooks, or a pair of copper mugs for Friday night drinks, makes a handsome nod to the French copper wedding. Copper darkens with age unless it’s polished, so decide early which kind of couple you are.
The wedding car, again
Find out what drove you away from the wedding, and hire the same model, or as close as you can get, for a weekend drive. If it was your dad’s old Holden, so much the better.
Two e-bikes and a rail trail
E-bikes have put long rides back within reach for plenty of couples in their fifties and sixties. Hire two for a weekend on a rail trail, built along an old railway line, and stop at every bakery on the way.
The 24K gold-dipped rose
A gold rose to celebrate thirty-two 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 thirty-two 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 32nd means
Why bronze
for thirty-two years?
Bronze is the gift for a thirty-second wedding anniversary on Hallmark’s list. It’s hard-wearing, ages well out in the weather and was made to last, which sounds about right for a marriage past thirty years.
Why bronze
Bells, propellers and statues
Bronze is still the metal of choice for bells and for nearly all professional cymbals, and it’s used for ship propellers because several bronzes stand up to seawater. For so long it was the hardest metal in common use that a whole age of history is named after it.
Once a thin layer of oxide forms on the surface, the metal underneath is protected from further corrosion. Thirty-two years of weather leaves its mark on a marriage too, and the marks are part of what keeps it sound.
Where it began
Grow old along with me
Hallmark’s grandest 32nd idea is a bronze sundial for the garden, inscribed with ‘Grow old along with me… the best is yet to be.’ The line opens a poem Robert Browning published in 1864, in his collection Dramatis Personae.
Many old sundials carry a Latin motto that loosely means ‘I only count the sunny hours’, which isn’t a bad rule for a marriage either. More than a century after Browning, John Lennon drew on the poem for his song ‘Grow Old with Me’, which he and Yoko Ono hoped couples would hear at their weddings.
Around the world
Copper in France and Spain
French lists call the 32nd the noces de cuivre, the copper wedding, and Spanish lists give copper too. Bronze is mostly copper with a little tin added, so the American and European gifts are closer than they look.
German, Dutch, Italian and Japanese lists skip the 32nd altogether, which leaves you free to start a tradition of your own.
32nd anniversary symbols
Bronze, transport and honeysuckle
Bronze and transport
Bronze is Hallmark’s gift for the 32nd. The Knot lists no traditional gift and calls the modern theme conveyance, which simply means transport: anything that carries the two of you from place to place.
The stone you already have
There’s no anniversary stone for the 32nd, so look after the one you already own. An engagement ring has done a lot of work by now: ask a jeweller to check the claws and give it a clean, then wear it out to dinner.
Honeysuckle
No flower is set for the 32nd. The Old Farmer’s Almanac gives honeysuckle the meaning ‘bonds of love’, and Kate Greenaway’s 1884 Language of Flowers gives ‘generous and devoted affection’, a fair description of year thirty-two.
Celebrating the 32nd
Make a little time for the two of you
Have your photo taken in the exact spot where you stood on your wedding day, ring the friend who gave the speech, or spend an evening going through the wedding album with the grandchildren, who will have questions about the hair. Thirty-two years gives you plenty to remember, and a good reason to make time for each other.
With transport as the modern theme, take the slowest trip you can find: a paddle steamer on the Murray, a heritage tram, or a ferry to an island you’ve never bothered to visit. The point is the company, not the destination.
A small card will do the rest. Name one thing you’d still choose them for, thirty-two years on.
More romantic anniversary ideasWhat the 32nd means to others
Letters that capture thirty-two years
By year thirty-two, most couples have been through enough to know what really matters, and very little of it is on the calendar. A letter lets you say so plainly, without anyone interrupting. Here are three to borrow from, and three real stories about year thirty-two.
Letters to inspire your own
We wrote these as examples. Borrow any line you like.
Dear Rob,
Thirty-two years ago you turned up to our wedding in a borrowed suit with the price tag still on the sleeve. Mum spotted it during the vows and has told the story every Christmas since.
This year you finished up at the council after twenty-six years, learned to make proper coffee, and took Lily to swimming lessons every Tuesday without missing one. She now calls you Coach.
I married a man who was always running late. Somewhere along the way you became the one everybody counts on. I noticed.
Happy anniversary. Check your sleeves.
All my love,
Deb
Dear Jen,
Last winter, when my heart decided to give us all a fright, you ran the whole show: the specialists, the paperwork, the kids flying in, and me, the worst patient in Wollongong.
Six months later I’m walking the escarpment three times a week, and you’ve taken up ocean swimming at fifty-eight, which I still think is a strange way to relax.
Thirty-two years ago I promised to look after you. This year you showed me how it’s done.
Happy anniversary. I’ll hold the towel.
Love,
Pete
Dear Maree,
This is the first anniversary we’ve ever spent apart, and I hate it, but there’s a very good reason. By the time you read this you may be holding our new grandson in a London hospital, while I feed the cat and stare at my phone.
Thirty-two years ago we had two hundred dollars, a borrowed ute and a flat above a fish and chip shop. We smelled of chips for a year. I’d do every bit of it again.
Give Hannah a hug from her dad, and give the baby one from his grandpa. Then come home, because the cat and I aren’t coping.
Happy anniversary, love.
Yours,
Kev
Worth reading
Real stories and finds about the thirty-two-year mark. Links open in a new tab.
Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, married in 1988, were the first Hollywood stars to announce they had COVID-19, in March 2020, while Hanks was in Australia filming Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis film. After five days in an Australian hospital and more than two weeks in quarantine, they flew home to Los Angeles, and on 30 April Wilson marked their 32nd anniversary with a photo of the pair in front of a snowy mountain and a wish: ‘Let’s go 32 more and then some!’
Canadian Mark Cole and his wife, Anna, have marked every anniversary with something special, from their first, in Seattle with a six-week-old baby, to a night in the back of a pickup truck at a themed hotel in Edmonton. For their 32nd it was a steak dinner and a bed and breakfast in Bragg Creek, Alberta. Each year they read the whole list over dinner, a habit well worth borrowing.
In August 1951 the Lord Mayor of Newcastle, Alderman Purdue, and the Lady Mayoress celebrated their 29th wedding anniversary on the very day that the Lord Mayor’s driver, Mr W. Johnson, and his wife celebrated their 32nd. The two couples met at Newcastle City Hall that evening to congratulate each other, and the paper ran their photo on its front page. A lovely reminder that the person behind the wheel has milestones too.
32nd anniversary FAQ
