Paper 1st Wedding Anniversary Gift Ideas

Everyone has heard of golden wedding anniversaries and ruby wedding anniversaries, but if you’re not married yourself, you may not know that every year has a theme! The theme is supposed to represent the gifts that the husband and wife give each other, and there is a traditional list and a modern list - for some countries they differ slightly but this is what I’ve found online:

 

Anniversary   Traditional                    Modern            

1^st                     paper                              clock                                                               

2^nd                    cotton                             china

3^rd                     leather                            crystal or glass

4^th                     fruit or flowers               electrical appliances

5^th                     wood                               silverware

6^th                     sugar                              wood

7^th                     copper or wool               desk sets/ pen and pencil sets

8^th                     bronze or pottery            linens or lace

9^th                     pottery or willow            leather

10^th                   tin                                   diamond jewellery

11^th                   steel                                fashion jewellery, accessories

12^th                   silk or linen                    pearls, coloured gems

13^th                   lace                                textiles, furs

14^th                   ivory                              gold jewellery

15^th                   crystal                            watches

16^th                   -                                     silver holloware

17^th                   -                                     furniture

18^th                   -                                     porcelain

19^th                   -                                     bronze

20^th                   china                              platinum

21^st                   -                                     brass, nickel

22^nd                   -                                     copper 

23^rd                   -                                     silver plate

24^th                   -                                     musical instruments

25^th                   silver                              silver

30^th                   pearl                               diamond

35^th                   coral                               jade

40^th                   ruby                               ruby

45^th                   sapphire                         sapphire

50^th                   gold                               gold

55^th                   emerald                         emerald

60^th                   diamond                        diamond

 

I’m a bit surprised at some of the themes on the modern list – in this digital age, I doubt many people want desk sets, and electrical appliances doesn’t seem particularly romantic! (Then again I suppose neither does the more traditional tin). Furs are a throwback from a former era unless it means fake fur, and I do think it’s slightly mercenary that women can expect diamonds after only ten years of marriage rather than 60 – in fact according to the modern list, there are three opportunities for women to receive diamonds!

 

I do think these lists are rather unrealistic because how many people can afford real diamonds? But still, I know a lot of people enjoy coming up with quirky gifts that fit each theme.

 

The first anniversary, paper, is quite good for people who may have overspent on their wedding or are still setting up home together – it’s also a fairly easy one if you haven’t gotten around to printing out wedding photos or doing a wedding photo album!

 

Here are some of my favourite suggestions for 1^st (paper) anniversary gifts – and read on to see what my husband and I got each other!

•  A card – you don’t need to give each other anniversary gifts on top of birthday and Christmas presents so why not agree from the outset you will just do cards?
• Photo album, photo book or printing out photos to frame – of your wedding or honeymoon, or moments from your first year together, or a photo story from when you met right up to when you got married
• A bunch of paper flowers – which you can fold yourself following an origami book, or buy ready made
• A book – something romantic, or a copy (even a first edition) of a book they really love
• The lyrics to the song you chose for your first dance, or your wedding vows, printed out and framed
• A calendar made up of photos of you both
• A personalised print like this or like this
• A framed map, where you’ve marked places you have been together and places you want to go
• A framed picture of your wedding venue – there are places online where you can commission a painting or line drawing, or you can frame a photo
• A framed paper-cut picture like this or this
• A scrapbook of photos and memories if you are the sort of person like me who keeps ticket stubs and mementos from places you have been together. You could also turn this into a memory board and frame to go on the wall.
• A personalised notebook
• Tickets to a show or gig or similar – the tickets are made of paper, or if you print an e-ticket that works too!
• Write them a poem if you are feeling creative – this is a nice cheap idea. Or if you’re a bit more flush, you could commission someone to write a poem about your beloved!
• Write them a love letter, or a series of love notes that you can surprise them with
• A flying lesson – this is not strictly a paper anniversary gift, but you can give your partner a paper plane folded from a print-out of the details of the lesson!

My husband got me a fantastic anniversary gift which I hadn't spotted despite it being from Not on the High Street.com, which I had combed myself looking for gift ideas! It's the perfect present for me and shows how well he knows me, because I like to scrapbook and do papercrafts, and to make lists and fill in notebooks.

 

It's a wedding anniversary album, with 50 pages. Each page has the same layout, with a space for a photo, and places to write down where you spent your anniversary, what you gave each other and a space to write either some notable things that have happened over the past year or your wishes for the year ahead. It's really lovely and I'm looking forward to filling it in!

I was debating between several ideas for my husband and decided to get him two things - and after having a look online decided to make rather than buy them. First I went with one of the ideas I'd seen on various websites, getting the lyrics to our first dance printed out. It would have looked better if I'd had it professionally done but I don't think this looks bad at all - I selected a font and made different lines different sizes depending on how many words per line.

 

 Then because I wanted to do something a bit more creative I did a papercut of our wedding venue. A paper cut is where you use a sharp craft knife to cut out around a picture - every section must be connected to the edge of the paper otherwise you'd find parts of the picture come away in the middle. So it can be a little challenging but it's good fun!

I drew a sketch of the roman temple at the Larmer Tree Gardens which is where we stood during the ceremony (our guests were seated on the grass in front) and added some words at the top with our names and wedding date. As each letter has to be attached to the edge of the paper somehow the easiest way to do this is make the letters look like flags flying on bunting, and attach each letter to the bunting and attach the bunting to the edge of the paper.

The Larmer Tree has several peacocks which wander around and one featured in several of our wedding photos so I wanted to include a peacock in this picture. I decided to add some different colour and texture by using a peacock sticker that had little gems on it, and added a couple of other gems to the temple outline. I bought frames for each pictures as well.

It's a bit different, very personal to us, and homemade with love.