The 10th Anniversary Gift Is Tin
The traditional tenth anniversary gift is tin, with aluminum added on American lists. It is one of the original eight: Emily Post listed the tin wedding in 1922, and said the tin presents were "seldom anything but jokes".
US traditional: tin, aluminum · UK lists: tin
What Does the 10th Anniversary Gift Mean?
Tin is cheap, flexible and keeps things safe, which is roughly how the tenth gets read now: a marriage that bends without breaking and protects what is in it. Post did not see it that way. In 1922 the tin anniversary was a party where guests brought joke presents, and the real gifts started at the fifteenth. The modern version keeps the tin and changes what goes inside it. The 10th is one of the eight anniversaries in Emily Post’s Etiquette (1922), the oldest widely read American list.
Checked against Emily Post, Wikipedia and Hallmark on .
What Are Good 10th Anniversary Gift Ideas?
- A tin of ten years. One small thing from each year (a ticket, a cork, a key) in a vintage tin.
- A puzzle in a tin. Tip the pieces of a picture of the two of you into an old cookie tin. Built together on the night.
- Ten love letters in a tin. One for each year, written now, read on the anniversary.
- Tin anniversary art. A print on an aluminum panel, which is the aluminum half of the list.
- A trip somewhere tinned. A coast with a cannery, an anchovy bar. It counts.
- A tin of their favorite things. The tea, the cookies, the candy. Small and exactly right.
What We Make for the 10th
We do not print on tin or aluminum. The idea people use us for at ten is the puzzle in a tin: a jigsaw of the two of you (or the family ten years has made) from one photo, painted in a real art style, with the pieces tipped into an old tin for the night. The puzzle arrives in its own box, so the tin is yours to find. A framed canvas of the same portrait is the version that stays on the wall.
10th Anniversary Questions
What is the traditional 10th anniversary gift? +
Tin, with aluminum on American lists. Tin appears in Emily Post’s 1922 Etiquette as one of the original eight anniversaries.
What did Emily Post say about the tin anniversary? +
She said the paper, wooden and tin presents were "seldom anything but jokes", and that crystal, at fifteen years, was the earliest anniversary guests took seriously. In her book these were gifts from guests at a party, not from one spouse to the other.
Do I have to give something made of tin? +
No. The list is a prompt, not a rule, and Post herself treated the tin presents as a joke. The tin works best as the container for something that matters: letters, a puzzle, ten years of small things.
Other Anniversaries
- 1st: paper
- 2nd: cotton
- 3rd: leather
- 4th: fruit and flowers
- 5th: wood
- 6th: iron
- 7th: wool, copper
- 8th: bronze
- 9th: pottery
- 11th: steel
- 12th: silk
- 25th: silver
- 50th: gold
Every year from the 1st to the 60th, with the US and UK lists side by side, is on the anniversary gifts by year page.