A milestone worth celebrating
45th Anniversary Gifts
Sapphire is both the traditional and the modern gift. Sapphire blue is the traditional forty-fifth anniversary colour.
A genuine dark blue rose, finished with a lustrous glaze and 24 karat gold, is a lasting way to mark your first forty-five years together.
The meaning behind your year
Gift ideas
Sapphire, Silver-Gilt and Blue Glass: Six Anniversary Gift Ideas
A few traditional, a few practical, and all of them better with a note attached.
A Queensland sapphire
Sapphire has been Queensland’s official state gem since 1985, and it was first found in the central part of the state in the early 1870s. Ask your jeweller for an Australian stone, and for where it was mined, so the story comes with the gift.
Fossick for your own
Sapphires are still mined around Anakie, Rubyvale and Sapphire in central Queensland. If you’d like to try your luck, the Queensland Government sells fossicking licences online and explains where you’re allowed to dig. Pack a hat and a sieve, and see who finds the first blue.
A night of the blues
Hallmark’s cheekiest idea for the sapphire year is a blues club or a rhythm-and-blues concert. Find a band, order something blue to drink, and dance to at least one song, whatever your knees say about it.
Blue glass for dessert
For friends or parents, Hallmark recommends blue glass dessert bowls or plates, vintage or new. Op shops and antique centres often have cobalt glass, and a mismatched set looks more charming than a matching one.
Silver-gilt, the French way
The French call the forty-fifth the silver-gilt wedding. A vermeil locket, a pair of cufflinks or a small dish has the look of gold for much less than solid gold would cost.
A brass door knocker
For the German brass wedding, fit a brass door knocker or house number engraved with your wedding date. Every visitor will knock on your wedding date without even knowing it.
The dark blue glazed rose
A dark blue rose to celebrate forty-five years together
A genuine dark blue rose with a lustrous glazed finish, its petals and leaves edged in 24 karat gold and its stem plated in matching gold. Each rose retains its individual shape and character, so no two are exactly alike—a lasting reminder of your first forty-five 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 30 cm long; display case 34 cm long
What the 45th means
Why sapphire
for forty-five years?
Sapphire is the gift for a forty-fifth wedding anniversary, on both the classic and the modern lists. It’s a deep blue stone that wears well for decades, which suits a marriage that has done the same.
Why sapphire
A stone for faithful people
GIA, the gemmological institute, notes that sapphire has long stood for nobility, truth, sincerity and faithfulness, and it is tough enough to be worn every day without fuss. After forty-five years together, you’ll recognise most of those qualities in each other.
People have trusted it with big promises for a long time. Ancient Greek and Roman royals believed the stone protected its owner from envy and harm.
Where it began
The sapphire wedding arrives
Sapphire is a newcomer to the anniversary list. A Michigan newspaper’s list of 1876 went straight from rubies at forty to gold at fifty, and so did a 1910 etiquette guide, while Emily Post’s Etiquette of 1922 jumped from silver at twenty-five to gold.
By 1950 the ‘sapphire wedding’ had reached Australian country papers. That February, Deniliquin’s Pastoral Times reported that Mr and Mrs W. J. Salter would mark their forty-fifth anniversary, and Mrs Salter’s birthday, with dinner at the Royal Hotel, hosted by their daughter, Pearl.
Around the world
Sapphire, brass and silver-gilt
Japan calls the forty-fifth the sapphire wedding, and Spanish lists agree. Dutch lists offer sapphire, gilded silver or vermilion, while the French noces de vermeil is named for silver-gilt: silver with a fine coat of gold, the same material as modern Olympic gold medals.
German lists go their own way and call it the Messinghochzeit, the brass wedding. The Italian list skips the forty-fifth altogether and waits for gold at fifty.
45th anniversary symbols
Sapphire, star sapphires and forget-me-nots
Sapphire, on every list
Sapphire is both the classic and the modern 45th anniversary gift on Emily Post’s list, and Hallmark gives it too. British and American lists agree on it, so there’s no need to choose.
Star sapphire
Some sapphires show a six-rayed star when light falls across them, caused by fine, needle-like inclusions inside the stone. GIA points out that a forty-five-year marriage and a star sapphire have one thing in common: both are rare.
No set flower, so try forget-me-nots
No reliable list names a flower for the 45th. If you’d like flowers to match the stone, the little blue forget-me-not stood for true love and memories in Victorian flower language.
Celebrating the 45th
Make a little time for the two of you
Book a long lunch with the friends who were at your wedding, spend a night in the town where you had your honeymoon, or let the grandchildren interview you about how you met and film it on a phone. Forty-five years gives you plenty to remember, and a good reason to make time for each other.
Sapphire blue makes an easy theme for a party: navy napkins, blue glass on the table, a cake iced in deep blue, and a dress code of something blue for every guest. Your wedding only needed one blue thing. This time, everyone can bring one.
When the guests have gone home, a few lines in your own handwriting will mean more than any speech.
More romantic anniversary ideasWhat the 45th means to others
Letters that capture forty-five years
Forty-five years is long enough to have been young together, busy together and, lately, a little slower together. A letter is a lovely way to say what you’ve noticed along the way. Here are three to borrow from, and three real stories about the sapphire anniversary.
Letters to inspire your own
We wrote these as examples. Borrow any line you like.
Dear Peter,
Forty-five years ago you proposed with a ring from a pawnshop in Fortitude Valley and a promise to buy me a proper one when you were rich. I’ve worn the pawnshop ring every day since, and I’ve stopped waiting for you to be rich.
This year you learned to make my mother’s scones, drove the grandkids to swimming every Saturday, and finally admitted you need glasses. You look rather distinguished in them.
Sapphire is the gift for forty-five years. I have hinted. Heavily. Consider yourself warned.
All my love,
Julie
Dear Carol,
Forty-five years ago you came into the bank where I worked to complain about a fee, and I waived it on the spot. Best decision I ever made, and the manager never found out.
We’ve had good years and lean ones. You went back to nursing when the farm had that run of dry seasons, and you never once made me feel it was my fault, even when it partly was.
The grandkids think we’re ancient. Let’s prove them wrong: the caravan is booked for Kalbarri, and I’ve packed your dancing shoes.
Love,
Ian
Dear Marg,
We married in your parents’ lounge room in Wagga because the church was booked and neither of us wanted to wait. Your uncle played the piano, mostly in the right key, and the cat walked down the aisle ahead of you.
Forty-five years on, I’d like to say it all again. Not bigger, just with more of the people we love: the kids, the grandkids, and the neighbours who’ve fed our chooks every holiday since 1990-something.
Same vows. Same bride. Possibly the same uncle, if he’s up to it.
Yours, still,
Don
Worth reading
Real stories and finds about the forty-five-year mark. Links open in a new tab.
In May 1950, Broken Hill’s Zinc Hall threw a proper party for Charlie Peter and his wife, of Wills Lane, on their forty-fifth anniversary. The couple were piped to the bridal table by a bagpiper from Mildura, cut a wedding cake and hosted about a hundred guests at the ‘wedding breakfast’, with around two hundred at the dance that followed. Scottish dancing, songs and a basket supper finished the night.
This State Library of Queensland post tells the story of the Black Star of Queensland, reportedly found near Anakie by twelve-year-old Roy Spencer and used by his family as a doorstop for more than a decade before anyone realised it was a star sapphire. Cut, it weighed 733 carats. A second tale involves a woman who stubbed her toe on a blue sapphire of nearly 2,000 carats, later carved into the head of Abraham Lincoln.
While Rita Hellmich was remodelling her bathroom in Greensburg, Indiana, in January 2013, a contractor pulling out the built-in vanity found a wedding band engraved with initials and a 1968 wedding date. It belonged to Joyce and Paul Werner, who had built the house in 1971 and lost the ring about forty years before, and who at first thought it was a prank. They drove over from Cincinnati, Paul slipped the ring back on Joyce’s finger, pronouncing it ‘like new’, and it was home just in time for their 45th wedding anniversary that weekend.
45th anniversary FAQ
