The 6th Anniversary Gift Is Iron, or Sugar
The sixth anniversary is where the lists start to disagree. The American traditional list says iron, British lists say sugar, and Hallmark’s list hedges with candy or iron. None of them goes back to Emily Post, whose 1922 list skipped from the fifth anniversary to the tenth.
US traditional: iron · UK lists: sugar · Hallmark: candy or iron
What Does the 6th Anniversary Gift Mean?
Iron and sugar sound like opposites, and the readings are: iron for strength after six years, sugar for sweetness. Most couples treat it as permission to choose. A practical household gives cast iron; a romantic one gives candy. Plenty give both. The 6th is not in Emily Post’s Etiquette (1922), which listed only eight anniversaries. It comes from the expanded year-by-year list generally credited to American jewelers in 1937 (history). Hallmark’s list gives candy or iron.
Checked against Emily Post, Wikipedia and Hallmark on .
What Are Good 6th Anniversary Gift Ideas?
- A cast iron pan. Seasoned on the night, used for the next forty years.
- Your wedding cake, again. The same flavour from the same baker, for two.
- A wrought iron hook or bracket. For the coats, the plants, the bikes. Practical and permanent.
- The candy from the first date. Whatever you shared at the movies, in absurd quantity.
- Iron garden furniture. One bench, for the garden you have now.
- A sugar-work dessert class. An evening learning to make something neither of you could make before.
What We Make for the 6th
Iron and sugar are not things we make. What we make is a portrait of the two of you, or of the family six years has produced, from one photo, painted in a real art style and printed as a framed canvas, a canvas or a puzzle. It is the part of the gift that stays on the wall after the candy has gone.
6th Anniversary Questions
What is the traditional 6th anniversary gift? +
Iron on the American traditional list. British lists give sugar, and Hallmark’s list gives candy or iron.
Why do the 6th anniversary lists disagree? +
Because the years between the original Emily Post anniversaries (1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50, 75) were filled in later, by different people in different countries. The 6th was never on the 1922 list.
Can I give iron and sugar together? +
Yes, and it is the easiest year to do it: a cast iron pan and the ingredients for the first thing you will cook in it.
Other Anniversaries
- 1st: paper
- 2nd: cotton
- 3rd: leather
- 4th: fruit and flowers
- 5th: wood
- 7th: wool, copper
- 8th: bronze
- 9th: pottery
- 10th: tin, aluminum
- 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.