A milestone worth celebrating
5th Anniversary Gifts
Wood is the traditional gift and silverware the modern theme. Blue is the traditional fifth anniversary colour.
A genuine blue rose, finished with a lustrous glaze and 24 karat gold, is a lasting way to mark your first five years together.
The meaning behind your year
Gift ideas
Wood, Silver and Sapphire: Six Anniversary Gift Ideas
A few traditional, a few practical, and all of them better with a note attached.
A personalised timber board
Choose a beautifully made timber serving board and have your wedding date or a short message engraved on the underside. Timber with a family connection makes it more personal still.
A box for the next five years
A timber keepsake box for ticket stubs, cards and photos from the years ahead, with the date you’ll open it written inside the lid.
A tree to grow with
Plant one in the garden, or a lemon or olive in a big pot if you rent, so it can move with you. Every summer it grows, you’ll remember the year you planted it.
A woodwork class for two
Spend a weekend carving spoons or building a small stool together. You’ll come home with a story and something wooden you made yourselves.
Silver for the meals you share
Choose silver-plated cutlery for everyday dinners, or a serving spoon engraved with your initials and wedding date to bring out on special occasions.
Sapphire, in any colour
Sapphire is the 5th anniversary stone, and it comes in every colour except red. Blue is the classic for studs or a pendant; a pink or yellow sapphire suits someone who doesn’t wear blue.
The dark blue glazed rose
A blue rose to celebrate 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 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 5th means
Why wood
for five years?
Wood is the traditional gift for a fifth wedding anniversary. Its roots, rings and branches offer a fitting image for a life that keeps growing together.
Why wood
Strength that keeps growing
A tree puts down roots and adds to its trunk year by year. Wood makes a thoughtful symbol for a marriage rooted in shared experience, with room to keep growing.
The rings record its growing seasons, each becoming part of the whole. Five years together brings its own record: the days you planned for, the surprises you didn’t, and everything you have learned about each other.
Where it began
The wooden wedding
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, American couples marked five years with a ‘wooden wedding’ party, and every guest brought something made of wood: furniture, a clock, kitchen tools or a picture frame.
One real invitation survives in Sycamore, Illinois. Mr and Mrs E.F. Dutton asked their friends to a ‘Wooden Wedding’ on a card cut from a thin sheet of wood, and the county’s history centre still has it.
Around the world
A wooden wedding in many languages
In Germany the fifth is the hölzerne Hochzeit, the wooden wedding, and couples dance their wedding dance again. It was once danced in wooden clogs; these days it’s more often barefoot on a wooden floor. In parts of northern Germany, the wooden wedding waits until ten years.
The Dutch call it the houten huwelijk and the French the noces de bois. In Japan the fifth anniversary is mokkonshiki, the wood wedding.
5th anniversary symbols
Wood, sapphire and daisies
Wood and silverware
Wood is the traditional 5th anniversary gift on both British and American lists. Silverware is the modern alternative, for five years of meals shared at the same table.
Sapphire
Sapphire rates 9 on the Mohs hardness scale, second only to diamond among gemstones. It comes in every colour except red, because a red sapphire is called a ruby.
Daisy
In Victorian flower language, the daisy stood for innocence and loyal love. It had a third meaning too, ‘I’ll never tell’, so a posy of daisies could promise that a secret was safe.
Celebrating the 5th
Make a little time for the two of you
Go back to the place you married, book a weekend in a timber cabin, or spend an evening looking through your wedding photographs. Five years gives you plenty to remember, and a good reason to make time for each other.
If you sealed away wine and letters on your wedding day, this could be the perfect time to open them. Read your letters, pour a glass, and write new ones to open on your tenth anniversary.
You don’t need a wine box to begin. A letter written today is something you can both keep.
More romantic anniversary ideasWhat the 5th means to others
Letters that capture five years
Five years in, you know each other’s habits by heart, but how often do you say what you love about them? A short letter does it. Here are three to borrow from, and three real stories about the five-year mark.
Letters to inspire your own
We wrote these as examples. Borrow any line you like.
Dear Tom,
It poured on our wedding day and you told everyone rain was lucky. I didn’t believe you then. I do now.
Five years, two addresses, one leaking roof, a dog who eats socks and a baby who thinks sleep is optional. You’ve done more of the 3am feeds than I have, and you still bring me tea in bed on Sunday mornings.
I know I don’t say it enough. You make the hard days easier and the ordinary ones fun, and you can make me laugh when I’m trying very hard to stay cross with you.
Here’s to the next five. I love you more than I did when I said yes, and I loved you a lot then.
All my love,
Sarah
Dear Priya,
The year we married, I was flying out to the mine every second week, and we spent our first anniversary on a crackly phone line. You never once made me feel guilty about it. You just crossed the days off the calendar on the fridge.
I’m home every night now, and I still haven’t got used to how good that feels. Neither has the dog.
In five years you’ve taught me to make your nani’s dal (badly, then better), to put my phone away at dinner, and to ask about your day before I tell you about mine. You’ve put up with my football, my snoring and my opinions about how to stack the dishwasher.
You’re the best decision I ever made. From now on, the dishwasher gets stacked your way.
Love always,
James
To us, at ten years,
We’re writing this at the kitchen table on our fifth anniversary, with the wine from our wedding open between us. Our wedding-day letters were lovely, and a bit naive. We had no idea about mortgages, night feeds, or what one small dog could cost at the vet.
Here’s what we know now. We’re good in a crisis and hopeless at flat-pack furniture. We argue about money and make up over pasta. We still reach for each other’s hand in the car.
By the time you read this there might be another baby, another house or another job, or none of those. Whatever has changed, we hope you’ve kept one habit: saying sorry first, and meaning it.
Open the bottle. You’ve earned it.
Love,
Us, at five
Worth reading
Real stories of the five-year mark. Links open in a new tab.
Erika and Axel met as volunteer drivers at the 1989 European Swimming Championships in Bonn, and decided to marry over a meal at a McDonald’s in London a few months later. Not everyone thought it would last. On their fifth anniversary, Erika’s dad gave them a box of champagne: he’d bet her sister the marriage wouldn’t make five years. They moved to Sydney in 2001 and have now been married for more than thirty years.
A century ago, a fifth anniversary was an excuse for a party. This 1910 guide suggests invitations written on birch bark or pine shingles, wreaths of wood shavings, supper on wooden platters, a ‘fishing’ game played in sawdust, and tiny wooden shoes as favours. Plenty of it would still make a fun theme night.
Five years after marrying on a beach in Jamaica, while it was minus 10 back home in Minnesota, Matt Walzer lists ten things he has learned, from sometimes going to bed angry to booking date nights for just the two of you. Short, practical and fond. (One mild swear word.)
5th anniversary FAQ
