Wedding Anniversary Gifts by Year: The Complete UK List

Every wedding anniversary has a traditional gift attached to it — some are famous (silver for 25, gold for 50), some are a genuine surprise on the day you look them up (salt, apparently, for eight). Here's the full UK list, year by year, with honest suggestions for what each material actually translates to in a gift you'd want to give. Bookmark it — this question comes back every year, by definition.

Years 1–5: the paper-to-wood years

• 1st — Paper. Prints, books, tickets to something, a map of where you met. The first anniversary is the most sentimental of the early ones — see our personalised 1st anniversary gifts.
• 2nd — Cotton. The get-out here is anything textile: a blanket for the sofa you never leave, good bedding, matching robes if you can pull it off.
• 3rd — Leather. Wallets, belts, a leather-bound notebook — this is the easiest early year to shop for, and engraved initials turn a nice object into a marker of the year.
• 4th — Linen (fruit and flowers, in some lists). Table linen for the dinner parties you keep meaning to have.
• 5th — Wood. The first genuinely good one: a personalised chopping board with your names and the date is the classic move — used daily, lasts decades, quietly romantic.

Years 6–10: the odd ones

• 6th — Sugar. Genuinely. Posh chocolates, a personalised Toblerone, or a baking day together.
• 7th — Wool (or copper). A good jumper or a copper-bottomed pan, which says ‘seven years and I know exactly what you actually want’.
• 8th — Bronze (traditional lists also say salt). Bronze-toned homeware, or lean into the joke with excellent salt.
• 9th — Pottery. A personalised mug or plate is the honest version; a pottery class together is the ambitious one.
• 10th — Tin. The first milestone. A decade deserves better than a tin can — see our personalised 10th anniversary gifts, or lean traditional with anything metal and engraved: a hip flask with the date does tin's job with considerably more charm.

Years 11–19: the ones nobody remembers

These are the years people most often look up — the traditions get obscure, but the searches say couples still want them:

• 11th — Steel
• 12th — Silk
• 13th — Lace
• 14th — Ivory (traditionally; a personalised keepsake is the modern take — nobody should be buying ivory)
• 15th — Crystal. The big mid-table year, and the easiest tradition to honour properly: engraved glassware with your names and the year covers it exactly. A pair of personalised wine glasses or whisky tumblers is fifteen years, solved.
• 16th–19th — the traditional list runs thin here (16th wax, 17th furniture, 18th porcelain, 19th bronze in most UK versions); by these years, personalise whatever the gift would have been anyway. The date does the work.

The milestone decades

• 20th — China. Twenty years is one of the quietly big ones — a personalised plate, mug or piece of kitchenware marks it in the traditional spirit.
• 25th — Silver. The first of the precious-metal years. See personalised silver anniversary gifts — silver-toned keepsakes with names and the year, without the bullion pricing.
• 30th — Pearl
• 35th — Coral
• 40th — Ruby. The big one before gold. See personalised ruby anniversary gifts — anything in deep red with forty years of names and dates on it lands perfectly.
• 45th — Sapphire
• 50th — Gold. Half a century. See personalised golden anniversary gifts. These are usually bought by children and grandchildren rather than the couple — a keepsake with the whole family's names on it is the modern golden-anniversary move.
• 55th — Emerald · 60th — Diamond · 65th — Blue sapphire · 70th — Platinum. Beyond gold, every year is a victory lap.

What's the 10th anniversary gift?

Traditionally tin. Most couples interpret it loosely — the point is durability, ten years in. A personalised gift with your wedding date does the job with more romance than tin manages on its own.

What's the 15 year anniversary gift?

Crystal. Engraved glasses with your names and the year honour it exactly — this is the year the tradition practically writes the gift for you.

What's the 20th anniversary gift?

China. Personalised ceramics — a plate, a mug, something for the table — keep it traditional without being twee.

What's the 25th anniversary gift?

Silver — and the answer to ‘what do silver wedding anniversary gifts look like without buying actual silver?’ is: silver-toned, engraved, dated. It's the year the inscription matters more than the metal.

Do you follow the traditional list?

Nobody's checking. The list is a starting point, not a rule — the anniversaries people remember are the ones where the gift had their name, their date, or their story on it. If in doubt, browse our full range of personalised anniversary gifts and let the year's material be a theme rather than a constraint.