Beautiful Wedding

If you’ve been pondering what to give your spouse for your upcoming wedding anniversary, you’ll have some serious decisions to make. Traditional wedding anniversary gifts have been in vogue for almost a hundred years now, ever since Emily Post published her all important etiquette guide. Since that time millions of wedding anniversary gifts have been purchased using Emily Post’s recommendations as a guide. Unfortunately, for husbands and wives, the traditional list for wedding anniversary gifts isn’t really that exciting. Who really wants to receive copper on their seventh wedding anniversary?

After a while, the modern list for wedding anniversary gifts was published and the recommendations on the list are definitely more exciting. So, now a couple must decide whether they want to go with the traditional or the modern list for anniversary gifts. To help you decide we have listed both lists here for your side by side comparison.

Traditional

First Paper

Third Leather

Second Cotton Fourth Flowers

Fifth Wood

Sixth Candy/Iron

Ninth Pottery/Willow

Eight Bronze/Pottery

Seventh Wool/Copper Tenth Tin/Aluminum

Eleventh Steel

Twelfth Silk/Line

Thirteenth Lace

Twentieth China

Fifteenth Crystal

Fourteenth Ivory Twenty-fifth Silver

Thirtieth Pearl

Thirty-fifth Coral

Fortieth Ruby

Sixtieth Diamond

Fiftieth Gold

Fifty-fifth Emerald

Forty-fifth Sapphire

Modern

Clocks

China

Crystal

Appliances

Silverware

Linen/Lace

Desk sets

Bronze/Pottery

Candy/Iron

Leather

Jewelry

Pearls

Textiles/Furs

Gold Jewelry

Diamond

Platinum

Silver

Diamond

Jade

Ruby

Sapphire

Gold

Emerald

Watches

The first few years of recommended wedding anniversary gifts, for both the modern and traditional lists, are downright boring and unexciting. Take a look at the modern list for the fourth wedding anniversary-appliances? Most guys would be in the dog house sleeping with Spot if they dared to give appliances as wedding anniversary gifts to their wives. If you feel you must stick with a recommended list, it’s obviously better to switch back and forth between the modern and traditional lists, according to which one recommends the better wedding anniversary gifts.

That won’t always work, however because on some years, the same wedding anniversary gifts are recommended on both years. You’ll either have to get really creative or else ditch both lists and come up with an idea on your own.

Looking at both the modern and traditional wedding anniversary gift lists, it really makes you wonder what the people who wrote these lists were thinking. Pottery for the eight wedding anniversary? Maybe pottery is the recommended gift for the eighth wedding anniversary because by that time most couples are in the midst of child rearing and paying mortgages and don’t have extra money to spend on jewelry. Or maybe it’s because the divorce rate is so high and this way neither spouse is out a lot of cash if the marriage doesn’t make it. Either way, the important thing to keep in mind in selecting wedding anniversary gifts is that ultimately the choice should be up to the couple and not left to the whims of an antiquated list written by someone who doesn’t even know you. So, what if diamonds aren’t recommended until the sixtieth wedding anniversary according to the traditional wedding anniversary gifts list? A diamond is forever.