A milestone worth celebrating
43rd Anniversary Gifts
Hallmark’s theme for the forty-third anniversary is entertainment, with travel as a modern alternative.
Celebrate the love behind the milestone with a real rose preserved in 24K gold, a lasting keepsake of forty-three years together.
The meaning behind your year
Gift ideas
Entertainment, Travel and Opal: Six Anniversary Gift Ideas
A few traditional, a few practical, and all of them better with a note attached.
Tickets to somewhere new
Hallmark’s simplest idea is a performance at a venue you’ve never been to. Try the regional theatre you always drive past, an outdoor cinema in summer, or the community orchestra at the town hall.
A film night, done properly
For friends celebrating, Hallmark suggests a movie basket with popcorn and lollies, and it works just as well for the two of you. Choose the film you saw on your first date, if either of you can remember what it was.
The trip you keep putting off
Travel is the modern 43rd anniversary gift on an older American list. Book the one you always mention at barbecues, such as the Ghan, a paddle steamer on the Murray or a week on Norfolk Island, and put the booking in the card.
Opal, from Australian fields
Spanish lists call the 43rd the opal wedding, and Australia produces about 95 per cent of the world’s precious opal. Black opal from Lightning Ridge or white opal from Coober Pedy makes a pendant that comes with a story.
Flannel for the cold months
For the French flannel wedding, give soft flannel sheets or matching flannel pyjamas before winter sets in. Wearing them at the same time is optional. Laughing at each other in them is not.
A term of dance lessons
Sign up for ballroom, Latin or rock’n’roll classes at the local hall, and practise in the kitchen between lessons. By the next family wedding, the grandchildren will be the ones watching you.
The 24K gold-dipped rose
A gold rose to celebrate forty-three 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 forty-three 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 43rd means
Why entertainment
for forty-three years?
Entertainment is Hallmark’s theme for a forty-third wedding anniversary, and travel is the modern gift on an older American list. Both suit a couple who have earned a few good nights out and somewhere new to see.
Why entertainment
A night out, for a change
By the forty-third year, plenty of evenings end with the two of you, the television and a quiet tug of war over the remote. Hallmark’s theme is a nudge to get out of the house: a show, a concert, a match, anything with an audience and a reason to dress up a little.
Hallmark’s own suggestions are wonderfully broad, running from the opera to a rodeo or a monster-truck rally, and its advice is to pick ‘whatever they like best’. The point is the shared outing, so the choice of venue says as much as the tickets.
Where it began
A year the old lists skipped
None of the early anniversary lists had a forty-third. When Brisbane’s Telegraph printed the names of the anniversaries in 1937, it went straight from the ruby wedding at forty to the golden wedding at fifty.
The gap was filled much later. A list compiled by librarians at the Chicago Public Library in 1997 gave travel for the forty-third, and Hallmark’s list now offers entertainment as a theme. Neither comes with centuries of custom attached, so you’re free to read them however you like.
Around the world
The flannel wedding
In France the forty-third is the noces de flanelle, the flannel wedding. The German, Dutch, Italian and Japanese anniversary lists don’t name it at all.
Flannel probably began in Wales, where a soft, fluffed woollen cloth known as ‘Welsh cotton’ was being made by the sixteenth century. These days it turns up as pyjamas, sheets and checked shirts, which makes the French name a fair description of a comfortable marriage.
43rd anniversary symbols
Entertainment, opal and flannel flowers
Entertainment and travel
Hallmark lists entertainment as a theme rather than a material, so a ticket counts as much as a parcel. Travel works the same way: the gift is the experience, and any souvenir is a bonus.
None set, though Spain says opal
English-language lists set no stone for the 43rd, but Spanish lists call it the bodas de ópalo. Opal is Australia’s national gemstone, and the Coober Pedy field began in 1915, when a fourteen-year-old boy found one near a prospectors’ camp.
None set, so try the flannel flower
No reliable list names a flower for the 43rd. Since the French call it the flannel wedding, look out for Australia’s flannel flower, whose grey stems and leaves are covered in soft down, rather like the fabric. It grows in sandstone heath around Sydney and is easiest to spot in spring.
Celebrating the 43rd
Make a little time for the two of you
See a matinee and have an early dinner afterwards, take the train somewhere you’ve never been for the day, or let the grandchildren teach you the card game they keep winning. Forty-three years gives you plenty to remember, and a good reason to make time for each other.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s best-known love poem is Sonnet 43, which opens ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.’ Take the hint and count your own: a line for every year you’ve been married, read aloud over dessert.
If forty-three lines sounds like a lot, one will do. Slip it into a coat pocket, where it’ll turn up later in the day.
More romantic anniversary ideasWhat the 43rd means to others
Letters that capture forty-three years
Forty-three years in, you’ve heard each other’s best stories more than once, and you still laugh in the right places. A letter is a chance to tell them something they haven’t heard. Here are three to borrow from, and three real stories about year forty-three.
Letters to inspire your own
We wrote these as examples. Borrow any line you like.
Dear Ray,
Forty-three years ago you promised to take me to Paris. Since then we have been to Bathurst eleven times for the motor racing, and once to Paris, Texas, by accident, on the way to somewhere else.
I’ve enjoyed nearly all of it. You are excellent company in a car, apart from the singing, and you have never once complained about stopping for a toilet in the middle of nowhere.
This year I’ve booked the real Paris. You’re coming. Pack the good shoes.
All my love,
Jan
Dear Helen,
You were the only person at the Ipswich Town Hall dance who laughed at my jokes, and I married you for it. Forty-three years later you’re still laughing, although I suspect it’s mostly at me now.
Since I retired, you’ve put up with me reorganising the pantry, joining three committees and taking up the ukulele. You’ve managed it with patience, earplugs and only the occasional sigh.
The tickets for the musical are in this envelope. I know you’ll sing along. I promise I won’t.
Love,
Bill
To us,
We’re writing this in a motel in Longreach, with the kettle on and a paper map across the bed because neither of us trusts the phone. Forty-three years married, and we still can’t agree which way is north.
We’ve seen a lot from the front seat: our children grow up, our parents grow old, and now grandchildren who think we’re hilarious, mostly on purpose. We’ve been lucky, and we know it.
Next year, somewhere new. Same company.
Love,
Us
Worth reading
Real stories and finds about the forty-three-year mark. Links open in a new tab.
On his forty-third wedding anniversary in July 1959, President Dwight Eisenhower was asked at a press conference for the secret of a happy marriage. His answer took two words: ‘Stay married.’ He added that, from the vantage point of sixty-eight, a successful marriage got happier as the years went by. Short, and hard to argue with.
In 1979 a first-year medical student bought two etched crystal glasses from the hospital’s Carry On Shop for two dollars each, one for himself and one for his fiancée. John and Marie toasted with them at their wedding in June 1980, and again on their forty-third anniversary in 2023. A tiny post with then-and-now photos, and proof that a treasured gift doesn’t have to cost much.
A cheerful report of a week-long bus trip from South Australia’s south-east to Mildura, with forty-three passengers on board. Les and Edna celebrated their forty-third wedding anniversary along the way, between a Murray River cruise, a tour of the old Wentworth gaol with some of the party dressed as prisoners, winery visits and an evening at the pokies. Travel and entertainment, all in one week.
43rd anniversary FAQ
