The golden wedding anniversary
50th Anniversary Gifts
Traditionally, the 50th wedding anniversary is the golden wedding anniversary, and nothing says 50th like a rose dipped in 24K gold. It joins the gold tradition of the 50th with the love a rose has always stood for.
If you don’t have a particular gold piece in mind for your partner, your parents or your friends, nothing beats a gold rose.
The meaning behind your year
Gift ideas
Gold, Family and Memories: Six Anniversary Gift Ideas
A few traditional, a few practical, and all of them better with a note attached.
A ‘Golden Wedding’ rose bush
There’s a deep-yellow garden rose called ‘Golden Wedding’. Planted in their garden, it flowers again every summer.
The front page from their wedding day
A framed newspaper from the day they married shows what the world was talking about while they were saying ‘I do’.
A poem or letter from each child
Ask each of the children to write a few lines about growing up in their house, then frame them together. Expect tears.
Their wedding cake, made again
Find the cake in the wedding photos and have a baker recreate it, or bake it yourselves if anyone still has the recipe.
Gold, engraved with two dates
A gold locket, bracelet or cufflinks engraved with their wedding date and the date of their 50th. Simple, and made to be passed down.
Gold-rimmed glasses
Champagne flutes with a gold rim, engraved with their names, for the toast on the day. They’ll come out again at every anniversary after.
The 24K gold-dipped rose
A gold rose to celebrate fifty 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 fifty 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 50th means
Why gold
for fifty years?
Gold has marked the 50th for centuries, and the reasons behind it are worth knowing. They make good material for a toast, a card or a speech on the day.
Why gold
The metal that outlasts everything
Pure gold never tarnishes or rusts. It can be beaten thinner than a sheet of paper without breaking, and every culture that found it has treasured it. It bends without breaking and comes out of the fire still shining, which is as good a description of fifty years of marriage as any.
Etiquette writer Emily Post saw it the same way. In 1922 she called the earliest anniversary gifts mostly jokes, silver gifts serious, and the golden wedding something close to sacred.
Where it began
A custom centuries in the making
The ‘golden wedding’ is recorded in German-speaking Europe by around 1600, and by the 1800s a wife was crowned with a silver wreath at 25 years of marriage and a gold one at 50, often by her friends. Even the word ‘jubilee’ began with fifty: it comes from the Hebrew for the ram’s horn blown to mark every fiftieth year.
The English-speaking world caught on more slowly. An American almanac listed gold for the 50th in 1859, and by the 1920s jewellers were joking that they had to wait fifty years for a golden wedding sale.
Around the world
How countries mark fifty years
In Australia, couples can receive congratulations from both the Governor-General and the Prime Minister for their 50th and every anniversary after it. A message from the King follows at 60 years, as it does in Britain, where the 50th is left to the family.
French mayors hold noces d’or ceremonies at the town hall, sometimes for several couples at once. In Japan, cities and newspapers honour golden couples together at kinkonshiki ceremonies. Canada, New Zealand and the United States send official congratulations at fifty years too.
50th anniversary symbols
Gold, yellow roses and violets
Gold
Gold is the 50th anniversary gift on both the traditional and modern lists, and has been for well over a century. Few anniversaries have such a settled tradition.
Gold itself
Most lists give gold itself as the 50th anniversary stone. A few jewellers suggest imperial topaz, a warm golden-orange gem, if you’d like a stone in the setting.
Yellow roses and violets
In Victorian flower language, violets stood for faithfulness. Yellow roses once meant jealousy, oddly enough, so it’s just as well the two come as a pair.
Celebrating the 50th
Make a little time for the two of you
The best golden anniversaries tend to be simple and full of people. One family filled the local hall with a tree of photographs, a grandchildren’s talent show and Dad on the karaoke. Another let the grandchildren write the questions for an interview with the couple, then filmed the answers.
If you’re organising, keep it to a length that suits them, invite anyone who was at the wedding, and put the original wedding photos where everyone will see them. Keep the speeches short: one person from each generation is plenty.
And when the party’s over, keep a quiet hour for just the two of you: the wedding album, a pot of tea, and a few lines each about the last fifty years.
More romantic anniversary ideasWhat the 50th means to others
Letters that capture fifty years
Fifty years in, you’ve said most things to each other more than once. A golden anniversary is the time to write the best of them down. Here are three letters to borrow from, and three real stories and finds about the fifty-year mark.
Letters to inspire your own
We wrote these as examples. Borrow any line you like.
My darling Ray,
Do you remember the dance at Paddington Town Hall, when you trod on my foot twice and then asked if you could walk me to the bus anyway? I said yes mostly to be polite. I’m still waiting for that bus.
We’ve had fifty years of ordinary days, and I’ve come to think the ordinary days are the whole point. Saturday mornings at the markets. You reading me the cricket scores I didn’t ask for. The garden you planted for me at every house we ever lived in, even the rental in Wagga that we knew we wouldn’t stay in.
We’ve had the other days too. The year we were both out of work. The winter of the hailstorm, when half the roof came in. You held my hand through all of it and never once told me to worry less. You just stayed.
The grandchildren think we’re very old and very boring. I think we’re the luckiest people I know.
Thank you for fifty years of walking me to the bus.
All my love, always,
Joan
Dear Margaret,
Fifty years ago today you walked down the aisle on your father’s arm, and I forgot every word of the vows I’d practised in the car. You whispered them to me. You’ve been prompting me ever since.
When I think about fifty years, it isn’t the big moments that come to mind. It’s the flat in Brunswick with the fridge that hummed all night. It’s you driving the Kingswood home from the hospital with the twins in the back, because my hands were shaking too much to hold the wheel. It’s the year the business went under and you said, “Right, what’s next?” before I’d even finished telling you. And it’s every cup of tea you’ve left on the bench for me before I’ve thought to ask.
I haven’t always been easy to live with. You know that better than anyone. You stayed anyway, and you made it look easy, which it wasn’t.
People keep asking what our secret is. I tell them I married someone kinder than me, then spent fifty years trying to keep up.
Happy anniversary, love. I’d say all those vows again, and this time I’d remember them.
All my love,
Tom
Dear Mum and Dad,
We’ve been trying to work out what fifty years of marriage looked like from where we sat, and we’ve agreed on one thing: it looked easy, which is how we know how hard you must have worked.
We remember the caravan holidays at Forster, when it rained for nine days straight and you turned it into a card tournament. We remember Dad driving four hours each way to bring Sarah home when her car broke down, and Mum pretending she wasn’t waiting up. We remember the kitchen table, where every problem this family ever had was solved over a pot of tea and a packet of Iced VoVos.
Mostly we remember the way you talk to each other. You still laugh at each other’s jokes, even the ones we’ve heard four hundred times. You still say thank you for the small things. We didn’t know, growing up, how rare that is. We do now.
Everything good in our families started with the two of you, fifty years ago today.
Happy golden anniversary. We love you both more than we say.
Sarah, Michael and Kate
(and all nine grandchildren, who helped with the spelling)
Worth reading
Real stories and finds about the fifty-year mark. Links open in a new tab.
Brothers Robert and Duncan Burr met their future wives at the same dance at the Temperance Hall in South Melbourne in 1894, married them in a double ceremony at Heidelberg in 1902, and so reached their golden weddings on the same day in 1952. Mrs Robert Burr said it had been love at first sight, while Mrs Duncan Burr said her husband was ‘not her first beau, but he was the best’. The two couples had spent every anniversary together, and more than 50 guests came to the party at Duncan’s home in Carnegie.
In April 1980 Jack Slade and his wife, from Twickenham in London, celebrated their golden wedding in Canberra, where they were spending a few months with their daughter and son-in-law in Reid. They had married in Alexandria, Egypt, while Jack was working for the Eastern Telegraph Company, and moved to London six months later. Jack told the paper it had been love at first sight and had ‘grown in intensity’ over the years, and the couple marked the day with a family gathering and a lunch for the friends they had made on earlier visits.
This plain band of 22-carat gold, made in the United States and now on display in the V&A’s jewellery gallery in London, would be impossible to date were it not for the words engraved inside: ‘Mary to Edward 1869’. The museum explains that rings have stood for love and marriage since Roman times, and that early gold bands were often engraved with a short romantic motto called a posy, from the French for poem. As it notes, the simple gold wedding ring has barely changed since this one was made.
50th anniversary FAQ
