Wedding Anniversary Gifts by Year: The Traditional and Modern List from Paper to Diamond, and the Art That Fits Each

Wedding anniversary gifts by year follow a list Australians have used for generations: paper for the 1st, cotton for the 2nd, leather for the 3rd, wood for the 5th, tin for the 10th, crystal for the 15th, china for the 20th, silver for the 25th, pearl for the 30th, ruby for the 40th, gold for the 50th and diamond for the 60th. The table below adds the modern list and a painting that fits each year.

The materials are a starting point, not a rule. Most couples use the year's theme as a nudge: something in that material, that colour, or that spirit. A painting takes the theme well because art is made of exactly these things. Canvas is cotton. Stretcher bars are wood. Frames come in silver and gold. And a portrait painted from your wedding photo is the one gift that gets better with every year it hangs.

What are the traditional anniversary gifts by year?

The traditional list grew up in Britain and the United States in the 1800s and settled into its current form in the 1920s and 1930s, when retailers filled in the gaps between the old milestones of silver, gold and diamond. The modern list was drawn up in the United States in 1937 and is the one you see on jewellers' websites. Australia uses both, with the traditional list far better known. The wedding anniversary years and their gifts are set out below, with the painting or portrait that answers each one.

Years 11 to 14 and 16 to 19 have traditional gifts too (steel, silk, lace, ivory, and then wax, furniture and bronze among others), but hardly anyone buys to them. For those years, choose from the modern list, or simply give something the two of you want on the wall. The anniversary gift ideas page covers gifts for him and for her in general; this guide is the year-by-year version.

Anniversary gifts for years one to five: paper, cotton, leather, linen and wood

The early years are the easiest to shop for, because the materials are everyday ones and the gifts are personal rather than grand. They are also the years when a couple is most likely to be setting up a home with bare walls, which is where art earns its place.

1st wedding anniversary gift: paper

Paper is the first anniversary, and the obvious paper gift is a photo. The step up from a print in a frame is your favourite wedding photo on a stretched canvas. Print Your Own Image on Canvas takes the photo you upload and prints it on canvas in five sizes from 40 x 50 cm to 100 x 150 cm, stretched and ready to hang, with the option of a black, gold, silver or white floating frame. Prints take 10 to 14 days to make, so a first anniversary gift ordered three weeks ahead arrives with time to spare. If you would rather let them choose, a gift card is paper in spirit and arrives by email within minutes.

2nd anniversary gift: cotton

Artists' canvas is woven cotton duck, which makes the second anniversary the year a painting answers the theme exactly. A hand-painted oil on canvas, stretched over a timber frame, is cotton and wood together. Choose a scene that belongs to the two of you: the beach where you were engaged, the city you married in, a view from the honeymoon. The Australian art collection is a good place to start for a place-based painting, and every painting page has a room preview that puts it on a photo of your own wall.

3rd anniversary gift: leather

Leather is harder to match with art, so most couples lean on colour. Tan, chestnut and dark brown are the leather tones, and a warm landscape or an earthy abstract in a Natural Floating Frame reads the same way on a wall. If leather must be leather, pair a small leather gift with a painting and let the painting carry the occasion.

4th anniversary gift: linen, or fruit and flowers

The fourth year is linen in the Australian and British lists and fruit and flowers in the American one. Flowers are the easier brief: a floral oil painting lasts where a bouquet does not. The floral paintings collection runs from loose impressionist blooms to large single flowers, and for a famous work, Van Gogh's Almond Blossom (1890, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) was painted to celebrate the birth of his nephew, which makes it a natural anniversary painting for a couple with a young family.

5th anniversary gift: wood

Wood is the fifth year, and a stretched canvas already sits on a timber stretcher. To make the wood visible, choose the Natural Floating Frame, a slim timber frame with a small gap around the canvas, available on every canvas print and on most paintings. It suits landscapes, warm palettes and rooms with oak or ash furniture. A floating frame adds about 2 to 3 cm to each side of the canvas size, so check the size guide if the painting has to fit a particular wall.

Anniversary gifts for years six to fifteen: iron, wool, bronze, pottery, tin and crystal

These are the years people most often ask about, because the materials are odd and the modern list is no help (desk sets for the seventh year has never caught on). Colour and subject do the work here.

6th, 7th, 8th and 9th anniversary gifts

Iron for the sixth year suggests a city or an industrial scene: a skyline, a bridge, a harbour of cranes. Wool for the seventh is a gift to anyone who grew up on the land; Tom Roberts' Shearing the Rams (1890, National Gallery of Victoria) is the most Australian answer to a wool anniversary there is. Bronze for the eighth year points to a textured abstract in bronze and gold. Pottery for the ninth suggests a still life of jugs, bowls and fruit, or simply a painting in clay and terracotta tones.

10th anniversary gift: tin or aluminium

The tenth wedding anniversary gift is tin in the traditional list and diamond jewellery in the modern one. Tin and aluminium are hard to give with a straight face, so most couples go for silver tones instead: a painting in a Silver Floating Frame, or one of the famous paintings in a Modern Flat Silver frame. A decade is also long enough that the wedding photos have been in a box for a while, which makes a painted portrait from one of them a stronger tenth gift than anything made of metal.

15th anniversary gift: crystal

Crystal is the fifteenth year, and water is the usual translation. Monet's Blue Water Lilies is the classic choice, painted square and available from 60 x 60 cm up to 175 x 175 cm. A harbour, a river or a beach the two of you know works just as well, and the hand-painted paintings range has hundreds of water scenes to choose from.

20th, 25th and 30th wedding anniversary gifts: china, silver and pearl

From twenty years on, the anniversaries are the ones families mark with a dinner, and the gift is often from the children as much as from one partner to the other. The materials become precious, and so do the gifts.

20th wedding anniversary gift: china

China for the twentieth year is a dinner set in most households, but it can also be read as a colour. Blue and white is the palette of willow-pattern china, and a blue-and-white painting or a Delft-toned abstract carries the theme without another cupboard of plates. Monet's water lilies in their blue and white versions suit a china anniversary for the same reason.

25th wedding anniversary gifts: the silver wedding anniversary

Silver is the one material that is the same on both lists, and it is the easiest to deliver in art. Every famous painting in the masterpiece collection can be finished in an Ornate Silver Frame or a Modern Flat Silver frame, and the Silver Floating Frame is available on nearly everything else. Choose the painting first and the silver second: a landscape they have loved for years, in a silver frame, is a better 25th wedding anniversary gift than a silver frame with a painting found to fill it.

30th wedding anniversary gift: the pearl wedding anniversary

The thirtieth year is pearl, and there is one painting that answers it before any other. Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring (about 1665, Mauritshuis, The Hague) is hand-painted in oils in portrait sizes from 50 x 60 cm to 135 x 200 cm, and comes in the full range of frames, from a plain stretched canvas to a Gold Ornate Outer Frame. For a couple who would rather see themselves than a Dutch girl, a portrait from a photo of the two of them thirty years on is the pearl gift they will keep.

40th, 50th and 60th wedding anniversary gifts: ruby, gold and diamond

The late milestones are family occasions, and the gift is usually chosen by sons, daughters and grandchildren together. These are the years a portrait comes into its own: the couple as they are now, the couple on their wedding day, or three generations on one canvas.

40th wedding anniversary gift: the ruby wedding anniversary

Ruby is red, and a red painting is the direct answer. Beau's Gift, a textured abstract of red poppies, is painted in portrait sizes from 50 x 60 cm to 135 x 200 cm and offers all five floating frames. A red sunset over a beach they know, a field of poppies, or a red abstract for a modern home all hold the ruby theme. For the 45th year, sapphire, the same logic in deep blue: a night sky, a seascape, or Van Gogh's Starry Night.

50th wedding anniversary gifts: the golden wedding anniversary

Gold is the best-known anniversary of all, and the most-searched. Klimt's The Kiss (1907 to 1908, Belvedere, Vienna) is a painting about a couple, painted in gold, and is hand-painted in square sizes from 60 x 60 cm to 175 x 175 cm. In a Gold Ornate Outer Frame it is the golden anniversary gift in one piece; in a Black Floating Frame it suits a modern apartment just as well. Any other painting the couple loves can take the Gold Ornate Outer Frame, the Gold Classic Frame or the Gold Floating Frame, so the gold can come from the frame rather than the picture.

60th wedding anniversary gift: the diamond wedding anniversary

Sixty years of marriage is rare enough that the gift should be about the people, not the material. A family portrait painted from a photo, with up to four people on one canvas in sizes from 40 x 50 cm to 100 x 150 cm, is what most families give. Two photos can be combined, so a couple photographed separately can be painted together, and the wedding photo from the 1960s can be painted in colour. The painting begins with a 20% deposit, you approve a photo of the finished portrait before the balance is charged, and changes before approval are free and unlimited.

Anniversary gifts for parents and for couples when it is not your own anniversary

Anniversary gifts for parents are a different problem from gifts between partners: you are buying for two people at once, for a home that is already full, and usually with brothers and sisters chipping in. The gifts that work are the ones that are about the marriage itself. A portrait of the two of them from the wedding photo is the most-given parents' gift for a reason, and the same goes for anniversary gifts for couples who are friends. If you are unsure of their taste, a gift card lets them choose the painting together, and it never expires.

When to order a painted anniversary gift

Every hand-painted work is made to order, so the date matters more than it does for a gift from a shelf.

1. Hand-painted paintings and portraits take 21 to 28 days to paint, check and dispatch. Order about five weeks before the anniversary to be comfortable.
2. Canvas prints, including your own photo on canvas, take 10 to 14 days. Three weeks ahead is enough.
3. A custom portrait starts when the 20% deposit is paid and the photo is sent. Send the photo on the day you order, because the clock starts then.
4. A gift card arrives by email within minutes, or on a date you choose, and covers a gift ordered late.

Busy periods, especially the weeks before Christmas, can run longer. If the anniversary is close, order the gift card now and the painting straight after; the card can be the thing they open on the day. Our guide to which photos make the best portraits explains what to send so the painting is right the first time.

Questions people ask

What is the modern anniversary gift list?

The modern list was published in the United States in 1937 and pairs each year with a newer gift: clocks for the 1st, china for the 2nd, crystal for the 3rd, appliances for the 4th, silverware for the 5th, wood for the 6th, diamond jewellery for the 10th, watches for the 15th, platinum for the 20th, silver for the 25th, diamond for the 30th, ruby for the 40th, gold for the 50th and diamond again for the 60th. It is the list jewellers use; most Australian families still follow the traditional one.

Can a custom anniversary gift be painted from our wedding photo?

Yes. A wedding photo, including a scanned print from decades ago, can be painted in oils as a custom portrait in realism, impressionist or pop art style. Photos can be combined, backgrounds changed and colour added to a black-and-white original. You see a photo of the finished painting and approve it before the balance is charged.

What is a good anniversary gift for husband or wife?

The gifts that last are the ones tied to a place or a moment: the beach from the honeymoon, the city you married in, or the two of you painted from a photo. For a husband, a landscape or an Australian painting tends to land better than a floral; for a wife, a floral, a famous painting she already loves, or a portrait. Either way, match the frame to the year's material where you can.

What is the gift for a 10 year anniversary?

Tin or aluminium is the traditional 10th anniversary gift and diamond jewellery is the modern one. Most couples translate tin as silver tones, so a painting in a Silver Floating Frame or a Modern Flat Silver frame fits, and a painted portrait from the wedding photos, ten years on, is the other common choice.

Related guides

• Milestone birthday gift ideas: 50th, 60th and 70th
• Oil painting from a photo: which photos work best
• Floating frames explained: gold, black, silver, natural or white

Next step: find the year in the table, then open the anniversary gift ideas page to choose a painting or start a portrait from your wedding photo.