Wedding anniversaries
Enter your wedding date: find out how many years you've been married, when the next anniversary falls and what it's called (silver, gold, diamond…).
Anniversary names
Where the names come from
Tradition pairs each milestone with an increasingly precious material: from paper in year one to silver at 25, gold at 50 and diamond at 60. The names here are the most widespread in the English-speaking tradition: minor years vary by country.
Bonus idea
The chart highlights your next named milestone: handy for planning the party (or a material-themed gift: pearls for 30, ruby for 40…).
Why the materials get more precious
The progression is not random: it starts with cotton in the first year and climbs by durability and value, up to gold at fifty and diamond at sixty. The idea is that the bond gets harder to break every year, and the material says so without having to spell it out.
The early years use humble, everyday materials (paper, cotton, leather, wood), the middle ones worked materials (copper, bronze, china), the last ones metals and precious stones. It is a scale that doubles as a gift guide, because it hints at how much to spend without ever saying it.
The lists are not all the same
The traditional and modern lists diverge, and the second is a twentieth-century commercial invention: where tradition says «paper» for the first year, the modern list says «clock». Neither is more correct than the other, but it is worth knowing which one you are using.
They also change from country to country: silver is twenty-five years almost everywhere, but the milestones in between are not. In Italy the multiples of five are celebrated most, in the English-speaking world nearly every year has its own name.
The milestones people actually celebrate
In practice the real parties are three: ten, twenty-five and fifty. The golden wedding is the milestone that gathers the whole family, and sixty (diamond) arrives more and more often because lifespans have stretched while the average age at marriage has risen.
It is worth noting down the «small» milestones of the early years too, which nobody remembers: the first anniversary is celebrated with the most enthusiasm and the least planning, and from the second onwards the date starts slipping away.
Nearby tools
For exactly how many days have passed there is Difference between dates, and for the weekday What day was it. If you are organising the party, Portions per person helps with the table.